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THE LIFE AND LETTEKS OF 
MARGARET JUNEIN PRESTON 




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THE LIFE AND LETTEKS 



OF 



MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 



BY 



ELIZABETH PRESTON ALLAN 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cfce fttoa#foe pre??, <£ambri&0e 

1903 










COPYRIGHT 1903 BY ELIZABETH PRESTON ALLAN 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Ptiblished November, iqoj 



*1 



DEDICATED TO 

THE POET'S GRANDCHILDREN 

GEORGE AND MARGARET PRESTON 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Childhood 1 

II. The Days of her Youth .... 12 

III. Lexington 35 

IV. Life in Lexington 58 

V. Love and Marriage 91 

VI. A Journal of War Times . . . .110 

VII. The War Journal continued . . . 151 

VIII. The War Journal concluded . . . 176 

IX. Post Bellum Days 209 

X. Letters 243 

XL Last Letters 289 

XII. Last Days 325 

Appendix : 
Margaret J. Preston ; an Appreciation. 

By James A. Harrison. . . . 341 



THE LIFE AND LETTERS 

OF 

MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 



CHAPTER I 
CHILDHOOD 



When a friend said to Margaret Junkin Preston, 
some years before her death, that he was keeping 
her letters for the life of her that would one day- 
be written, she treated the matter as a fantastic 
joke. So little claim did she consider her literary 
work to have given her on fame's bead-roll that 
her executors do not find a scrap of autobiography 
among her papers. 

It was perhaps the acceptance of her own esti- 
mate of herself in this connection that kept her 
family from offering to the public any memorial of 
her life at the time of her passing into the great 
beyond. This, and the difficulty that our increas- 
ingly busy generation finds in labor that requires 
what our poet herself called — 

" Hours winnowed of care, — 
Days hedged from interruption, and withdrawn 
Inviolate from household exigence." 

But in the years since her death it has been 
found that the readers of her poetry are also her 



2 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

lovers, whose sincere affection gives them the right 
to ask for a more complete acquaintance than her 
shyness had allowed during her lifetime. And it is 
in answer to this loyal demand that the following 
pages have been prepared. 

If the challenge is made that what the poet with- 
held during her life should not now be made pub- 
lic, because death has left the door ajar, it seems 
a sufficient answer to say that no reader devoured 
more eagerly every scrap of biography within reach 
than Mrs. Preston ; and none owned more frankly 
the debt she owed those other lives. 

Her turn thus to please and instruct has now 
come ; but the promise is given at the outset that 
no revelations shall be made which would have 
offended her womanly modesty, if she had found 
them upon the pages of Mrs. Browning's biography, 
for example, or that of one less famous than 
England's uncrowned poetess-laureate. 

A reader of biography naturally wants to know 
something of the beginnings of the life whose story 
is to be told ; but does not this curiosity too often 
bring down on our unwary heads an avalanche of 
genealogy that threatens to overwhelm us ? 

Mrs. Preston's forbears were for the most part 
strenuously occupied with life's highest duties, and 
were not concerned with exploiting themselves. 
Neither shall we seek to do this ; a few lines may, 
however, be devoted to indicating the strains which 
were mingled to make up the being of this woman- 
poet. 

Her father has left it on record that he knew 



CHILDHOOD 3 

very little of his family, and that heraldry had 
taken no notice of his ancestors : but this did not 
leave him without a glow of pride in the fact that 
" his lineage was of that stalwart, godly, and heroic 
race, the Covenanters of Scotland ; men and women 
who braved persecution for Christ's crown and 
covenant; and despite the curses of the Stuarts, 
and the claymores of Claverhouse, witnessed so 
long and so steadfastly for God and his truth." 1 

Mrs. Preston's first American ancestor, on her 
father's side, was her great-grandfather, Joseph 
Junkin, who came to Pennsylvania some time in 
the reign of George the Second, from County An- 
trim, Ireland. But there was no Irish blood in 
Joseph Junkin's veins. His ancestors had left 
Inverness, Scotland, for County Antrim, to escape 
the cruel persecutions of the Stuarts, and the little 
Margaret Junkin of this memoir was brought up 
on tales of heroism for conscience' sake ; — tales 
which fired her heart and her imagination to the 
end of life. Great-grandmother Junkin, ne'e Eliz- 
abeth Wallace, was even more the centre of these 
family traditions than her husband, for she had 
been, as a child, in the famous siege of London- 
derry. 

These great-grandparents of Mrs. Preston were 
married after coming to this country, took up 
land in Pennsylvania, and built on it a substantial 
stone house. In this mansion a second Joseph 
Junkin was born, who lived to fight as valiantly 
for political freedom, in the War of Independence, 

1 See Life of Dr. George Junkin. 



4 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

as his ancestors had done for freedom of conscience. 
Loyalty and courage have not been lacking in the 
Junkin family from generation to generation. 

Joseph the second married in his turn Eleanor 
Cochrane, another Scotch-Irish lass, of a family 
noted even among Covenanters for strictness of 
principle and practice. Mrs. Preston used to tell 
her children, with a mixture of pride and amuse- 
ment, of the little Cochranes walking to church 
on Sundays, over a mountain ridge covered with 
whortleberries, without daring to pick one ripe 
berry for fear of the Fourth Commandment ! And 
this is not an idle tale, in view of our present task ; 
we are to find presently this morbid conscientious- 
ness a warring element, even a controlling force, 
in a nature otherwise composed of the glow and 
flame and beauty-love and imagination that go to 
make up the soul of a true artist. 

Having thus briefly introduced the grandparents 
and great-grandparents of Margaret Junkin, it is 
fitting to paint a little more carefully the portraits 
of the father and mother whom she loved with a 
passionate devotion passing the capacity of most 
hearts ; whose rare goodness was ever to her their 
true greatness, beside which their other somewhat 
remarkable qualities paled. 

George Junkin, the father of Mrs. Preston, was 
the sixth of fourteen children born to Joseph and 
Eleanor Junkin, in the stone mansion in Cumber- 
land County, Pennsylvania. Religion and educa- 
tion were the foundations on which his childhood 
was built, and religion and education became the 



CHILDHOOD 5 

two absorbing passions of the man. One might 
almost say that from the days of his a-b-c training 
in the log school-house, to the end of his honored 
life as preacher and teacher, there was not a day 
on which one or the other, or both of these high 
themes did not occupy the first place in his thoughts. 
The judgment of his contemporaries is unanimous 
as to his strong and acute intellect ; his bold and 
candid character; his intense convictions ; his eager- 
ness as a reformer of what he believed contrary to 
God's will. It goes without saying that such a 
man, living in such times, could not do the work he 
did without arousing animosity ; but the very ene- 
mies he made were ready to confess that there was 
not a thread of selfishness or self-seeking or dis- 
honesty of purpose in the man, while those who 
knew him best could say, as did his old pupil, Dr. 
Charles Elliot, that he held the lamp of love, 
divine and human, so high that its radiance shone 
out on the darkest day. 

Mrs. Preston's biographer is tempted to linger 
over the lofty and successful life of this father 
whom she loved so deeply ; but the world has had 
that story, enthusiastically told. 

To this earnest, combative, toilsome worker, God 
gave as a life companion one of the sweetest, most 
radiant souls that ever came from His heart of 
love. Julia Rush Miller, to whom George Junkin 
was married in Philadelphia, on the first of June, 
1819, was, like himself, of Scotch parentage, being 
a descendant of the " Fighting Laird of Newton ; " 
but, unlike her lover,* she was reared in wealth and 



6 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

luxury, and she brought to the making of his home 
not only beauty and grace of person, good family 
connection, and a considerable fortune, but that 
tact and fine social discernment which were hers by 
inheritance and training. The old legend of the 
halcyon bird building her nest on the stormy waters, 
and thereby bringing them days of calm, is the 
best picture one can give of the perfect marriage 
which made for these two a sweet and central calm 
on the waves of an otherwise stormy and restless 
life. The young bridegroom himself records that 
his love was such as human language was not in- 
tended to express ! And for thirty-five years this 
sweet woman, always beautiful, always young, was 
the strength and happiness of his life. 

Mr. Junkin was, at the time of his marriage, a 
minister in the Associate Reformed (one form of 
the Presbyterian) Church, and he took his bride 
to live in the village of Milton, Penn., where the 
young preacher was serving more than one coun- 
try church. In this village, on the nineteenth of 
May, 1820, in a plain little hired house, was born 
Margaret Junkin, bringing with her into the world 
the unusual gifts which were to make her name 
known to many of her fellow countrymen whose 
hearts respond to the poetic touch. 

There is not a person now living to tell the story 
of Margaret's first ten years; nor a line left to keep 
the record of this earliest decade. We gather, 
however, from the memories of much younger peo- 
ple in her generation some impression of what this 
early life must have been. 



CHILDHOOD 7 

Although Mrs. Junkin had brought a generous 
dowry to her husband, they lived with exceeding 
plainness and simplicity in the little village home. 
For money meant to George Junkin, then and 
always, not ease and comfort and luxury for him- 
self, nor even for his family, but power to do good ; 
especially in bestowing upon worthy young men 
chances of education, which would fit them to be- 
come ministers of the gospel. 

With his wife's full consent, Dr. Junkin began 
then to give with that openhandedness which resulted 
in his putting into the ministry of the Presbyterian 
Church enough men to form a whole synod ! This 
also resulted in reducing his possessions to such a 
degree that his family had to be brought up in 
rigid economy, feeling at every turn the limitations 
of a narrow income. 

The little Margaret was never sent to school : 
was this for economy's sake, or because the parents 
wished to keep in their own hands the early train- 
ing of their precocious child ? We do not know. 
But the child herself, looking back from her expe- 
rience as a woman, regretted this loss of the com- 
panions and discipline of childish schooling. It, 
perhaps, fixed, even thus early, a shy and somewhat 
morbid habit of mind, which never left her. 

But her education did not suffer. Rather, one 
may say, the child's childhood suffered from over- 
strenuous education. The seriousness, and con- 
scientiousness, and intense realization of solemn 
truths, which little Margaret necessarily inherited 
with her covenanting blood, needed much sun- 



8 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

light and play and frolicsome idleness and laissez 
faire to sweeten life, and keep a wholesome bal- 
ance in the young nature. 

Instead of this curriculum, she was early set to 
con difficult tasks. Her mother was, of course, her 
first teacher ; and having received in Philadelphia 
the best education America afforded girls, Mrs. 
Junkin was well qualified for the undertaking. 
But Margaret's father was her chief teacher ; and 
from her sixth year, when he taught her the Greek 
alphabet, until her twenty-first year, when, as she 
used to say, the door of knowledge was slammed 
in her face, the father's relentless ambition was 
matched by the child's, to make her a scholar. 

I do not think Margaret knew when her young 
ambition to be a scholar first began to stir. Look 
back as far as she would towards that dawn of 
life, she seemed always to see the little student, 
pressing forward to whatever goal was set before 
her ; never satisfied ; and, as it seemed to her sen- 
sitive spirit, never satisfying her eager teacher. 
Ah, commendation was homoeopathic in those days ! 
Sugar-plums and words of praise were alike feared 
as unwholesome for children. 

When our busy little girl was ten years old, her 
father moved to Germantown, and took charge of 
the Manual Labor School there. This, of course, 
brought the city of Philadelphia, and the friends 
of her mother's girlhood, within reach of an after- 
noon's call ; and these two years, spent within the 
glamour of city ways, where life was eased some- 
what of burden and drudgery, brightened with 



CHILDHOOD 9 

opportunities of sight-seeing, and sweetened by ties 
of kindred and family affection, were the red-letter 
days in the memory of the child, the maiden, and 
even of the old woman. She never afterwards 
lived in a city, until her declining years brought 
her to Baltimore, and then four walls bounded the 
world for her. 

But the two years in Germantown were chiefly 
memorable in Margaret's life, not for the half 
imaginary impression she brought thence of the 
ease and charm of city life, but for the beginning 
of that rare blessedness, a life-long friendship. 

One of Dr. Junkin's teachers in the Manual 
Labor School, who followed him to Easton, and 
gave valuable aid in the founding of Lafayette 
College, was Charles F. McCay, a young student 
of Princeton College. Mr. McCay afterwards filled 
the chair of mathematics in the University of 
Georgia, and was for a time president of the Col- 
lege of South Carolina. He was the dearest of 
Margaret Junkin's early friends, and I have seen 
in the light of her eyes, when she spoke of him 
fifty years afterwards, the reflection from that great 
distance of his bright, lovable nature. 

Mr. McCay was to the little Margaret an unself- 
ish elder brother. He was ten years her senior, 
but seems to have found nothing more to his taste 
than the companionship of the two little girls, Mar- 
garet and her sister Eleanor, whose studies he 
fostered and encouraged, whose sedate little games 
he enlivened with boyish spirits, and whose dear 
comrade he was in a* thousand helpful ways. We 



10 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

shall see, by and by, how this golden thread of true 
friendship was to reappear and brighten our poet's 
last days. 

Before speaking of Dr. Junkin's removal from 
Germantown, it is time to count up the little tribe 
of brothers and sisters who followed Margaret into 
this love-crowned home. There were four sons and 
another daughter born during the ten years of Dr. 
Junkin's life as pastor in Milton. Next to Mar- 
garet was John, who became a physician, a sci- 
entist, and something of an inventor; Joseph, a 
brilliant young scholar, who died soon after gradu- 
ation ; Eleanor, afterwards the wife of " Stone- 
wall" Jackson ; George, a prominent and success- 
ful lawyer of Philadelphia, an elder in the Presby- 
terian Church ; and Ebenezer, who spent a useful 
life as a minister of the gospel. Another son, 
William, who was born after the removal to Ger- 
mantown, was in many respects the most attractive 
member of the family, inheriting, as he did, his 
mother's beauty of person and grace of manner, as 
well as her fine mental gifts ; his life, devoted to 
the gospel ministry, has ended since this task was 
undertaken, and the sense of a great loss fills many 
hearts. 

" There were thus six children younger than 
Margaret," her brother George says, " at the time 
of our removal to Easton. To all of us ' Maggie,' as 
we always called her, was a little mother. She 
ever had the most watchful care of us all, doing 
what she could to relieve her parents, as to our 
physical well being, and especially with regard to 



CHILDHOOD 11 

our education. My first recollection of Maggie is 
at the time of my youngest sister's birth, in Easton, 
when she had the care and entertainment of the 
little brood, mothering us with great success." 
The little sister, to whose birth Mr. Junkin refers, 
was Julia Miller, the youngest of the eight chil- 
dren who lived to maturity. She was afterwards 
the wife of the late Professor Junius M. Fishburn, 
of Washington College, Virginia. 

And so, peering eagerly into the mists of seventy 
years ago, we catch a glimpse of this ten-year old 
Margaret; slight, fair, with abundant auburn 
curls and blue eyes; quick of mind and move- 
ment ; sensitive, shy, conscientious ; exercising a 
commanding influence over the younger children, 
in spite of her tiny stature ; tender-hearted ; always 
busy; obedient and loyal to her grave father; 
passionately devoted to her beautiful and charming 
mother; a little house-mother herself from her 
earliest years ; yet even then tingling with poetry 
and romance, and with the ambition to be a scholar 
— such is the dainty figure thrown upon the warmly 
colored background of a home rich in mental and 
spiritual culture. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 

The removal of Dr. Junkin from Germantown to 
Easton was in the interest of an educational en- 
thusiasm which was then paramount with him. 
He had left his country churches in 1829, to take 
the presidency of Pennsylvania's Manual Labor 
School, at Germantown, " convinced," he says him- 
self, " that I might be useful in bringing into the 
ministry men of the right stamp, and thus do 
more than I could in my pastoral position." For 
this Manual Labor School was not intended pri- 
marily to make artisans, mechanics, or artists of 
any sort, but " had been inaugurated by philan- 
thropic gentlemen of the Presbyterian Church, in 
and around Philadelphia, with a view to facilitate 
the education of young men for the Christian min- 
istry." 

After carrying on this Germantown enterprise 
for two years, filling the school with students, and 
doing conspicuously good work in organizing new 
and improved methods, Dr. Junkin found that his 
board of trustees were minded to leave to him not 
only the management, but the financial responsi- 
bility of the school. As a matter of fact, many of 
the pecuniary claims of those two years were met 
out of his private fortune. 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 13 

And so ready was this man to spend and be 
spent for his fellow men that it seems likely he 
would have gone on supplying this deficit as long 
as he had a dollar left, if another factor had not 
entered into the question ; one which was three 
times to uproot his plans and his home. This was 
his unfaltering and outspoken loyalty to convic- 
tion. 

It is not necessary to enter here upon those dis- 
sensions in the Presbyterian Church which re- 
sulted in its division into the " Old " and the 
"New" schools; suffice it to say that this line, 
falling between Dr. Junkin and his trustees at 
Germantown, made him willing to entertain the 
proposal to remove to Easton, Penn., where an 
embryo college offered a fine opportunity for re- 
alizing the enthusiast's dreams of education which 
should be at once theoretical and practical. 

To this new home the Junkins moved when 
Margaret was twelve years old ; and here, with an 
interval spent — as we shall see later — in Ohio, 
the child grew into womanhood, and lived sixteen 
eager, busy, ambitious years. Here, of course, 
her education went on under the most favorable 
circumstances ; favorable, that is to say, for the 
mental culture per se. One still doubts whether a 
judicious mixture of the frivolous, a little more 
of the companionship of nonsense, would not have 
been more wholesome for a highly romantic soul, 
much given to introspection. But that might have 
spoiled the poet. Who can say? 

At Easton, as elsewhere, but perhaps especially 



14 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

at Easton, her father's intense and absorbing pur- 
pose, which resulted in the establishment of La- 
fayette College, was the chief factor in the girl's 
education. How full of splendid moral tonic must 
have been the atmosphere of that home, where per- 
sonal interests were not first, an end to which 
work and salary were only means ; but where the 
work was first, and the family a noble fellowship, 
whose highest aims were to further the work — 
for God and man ! What were Greek and Latin 
and French and history, compared to this school 
of life, in which her father, and no less her un- 
selfish, high-souled mother, were her lesson-books ! 

And yet the Greek and Latin and literature 
were much, and at Easton Margaret's home studies 
were widened by private lessons from the nascent 
college's professors and tutors. Her application 
was intense. And as she was not relieved from 
domestic duties during these years of hard study, 
but on the contrary assumed conscientiously (as 
the eldest daughter) a large part of them, the 
strain must have been very great. In after years 
her husband would playfully tell her — towering 
above her small stature — that it was the weight 
of these studies in early life that had stunted her 
growth, and made her, as Browning says, " the 
smallest lady alive." 

There was, however, another tradition in the 
family as to the cause of Margaret's small size, 
for she had been tossed on the horns of a cow, as 
a little toddler, a year or two old ; and everybody 
knows the Scotch superstition which attributes to 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 15 

this mishap the power to dwarf a little child's 
growth ! 

Mrs. Preston often spoke of the difference be- 
tween the avocations of her young life and the so 
much lighter tasks of girls at the end of the cen- 
tury : " We made everything we wore, when I was 
a young lady, my dear," she often said, "from 
our hand-embroidered collars and cuffs, and the 
worked edging on our underclothes, our corsets, 
and our hemstitched handkerchiefs, to our gaiter- 
tops, which we stitched, and then had soled at the 
shoemaker's, not to speak of stitching linen shirts 
by the dozen (with collars and cuffs attached) for 
our father and brothers. All this, remember, was 
done by hand." 

" How did you ever find time to read or write ? " 
her listener would exclaim ; and thus put on her 
mettle, the older woman would count up the classic 
authors in history, fiction, and poetry which she 
and her sisters read under their mother's guidance 
in those early, busy days. " We would have been 
ashamed to confess ignorance of these writers," 
she would insist ; " all educated women in my 
youth were expected to have at least so much 
knowledge." 

But the circle of girls whose May-time was in the 
sixties and seventies, instead of the thirties and 
forties of the century, shook their heads (heads 
often innocent of Gibbon and Hume, of Coleridge, 
Southey, and Wordsworth), and doubted whether 
the poetess was not judging her contemporaries 
by herself. Perhaps 'their suspicions were right. 



16 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Another reminiscence of Margaret Junkin's stu- 
dent days took the form of a keen regret in later 
years ; for it was connected with that loss of good 
eyesight which so early set a limit to the girl's 
otherwise unbounded ambition. " The only time," 
she said, " that I had to prepare my Greek lessons 
was after the family bedtime ; the only time my 
busy father could hear me recite was before our 
early breakfast ; so that study and recitation were 
both done by the inefficient light of our primitive 
candles. I am sure the close sight thus required 
by the Greek text put a strain upon my eyes 
which was the beginning of my trouble." 

" Many a time," her children remember hearing 
her say, " when we would kiss our mother good- 
night, she would say to sister Ellie, ' Be sure you 
put out Maggie's candle when you go to bed ; ' 
but when Ellie would offer to discharge her mis- 
sion, I would raise my finger in half-serious threat, 
and say, ' Touch it if you dare ! ' It was the only 
respect in which I disobeyed my mother's wishes, 
and as my father encouraged my undertaking 
more than I could possibly do in the daytime, I 
felt justified. But in this, as in everything else, 
my mother was far wiser than I." 

Some years before Mrs. Preston's death, when 
an admirer spoke of her scholarship, she answered 
with an almost angry disclaimer, " How can you 
speak of one as a scholar whose studies were cut 
short at twenty-one, never to be resumed ! " And 
if one limits the word " study " to systematic les- 
sons, this was true. 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 17 

For at that age Margaret's eyes were in such a 
condition that loss of sight was feared, and for 
about seven years she was hardly allowed any 
reading, much less study ; for part of that time 
she lived in a darkened room, often suffering 
acute pain, and during the whole time her impa- 
tient spirit was chafed and fretted by thwarted 
ambition. She took entire charge of the house- 
keeping during those years, walked and visited, 
and helped on the education of the younger chil- 
dren as far as her " ball and chain " would permit. 

Before this period of semi-blindness, and after- 
wards, the education of her brothers and sisters 
was the most strenuous purpose of her life, and 
they bear record to-day to her unwearied efforts to 
interest them in good reading and in memorizing 
poetry, besides helping them in daily and less 
enlivening tasks. 

One of the pleasures which this failure of eye- 
sight denied the young student was the use of 
pencil and brush. She had very decided artistic 
talent, and although want of thorough instruction 
and this early embargo upon the use of her eyes 
threw her out of the race for any prize in this 
respect, she always said it was the work she loved 
best, and that if she had been free to choose, she 
would willingly have thrown away her pen for 
crayon or palette. 

It must have been soon after going to Easton 
that Margaret began to write. No record can be 
found — how interesting such would be ! — of her 
first attempt at verse-making. Her kindred now 



18 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

living cannot remember a time when she did not 
write verses and rhyming letters ; so that it is left 
to our imagination to picture the little girl, her 
small fair face flushed with eagerness, her hands 
trembling, her pulses galloping, as she feels the 
first breath of that divine afflatus which was later 
to „take possession of her spirit, making her a 
priestess of no mean order in this cult. 

As we cannot find, in that dim past, the begin- 
ning of her intellectual life, neither is there any 
record of the beginning of the deeper life which 
we call religion. Did she grow into that sweet 
inheritance of faith, which is the happy privilege 
of children of the covenant, hardly knowing when 
she made the great decision, stepping over the 
boundary between natural and revealed religion 
so early that it was an invisible line ? We cannot 
remember to have heard her tell the story of her 
conversion ; but the impression her after Christian 
life made was that of one who had had deep con- 
viction of sin, anxious fears, more or less struggle, 
as if the way had proved straight and narrow to 
her young soul. 

There came dark days in her life afterwards 
when she questioned the reality of her conversion ; 
but she was the only one who could doubt the sin- 
cerity of a faith and devotion that for threescore 
years " constrained " her ; holding her to convic- 
tions of duty, prompting daily loving-kindnesses, 
calling forth constant acknowledgment of God's 
greatness and praise of His goodness, even when 
unable to feel assured of her own acceptance with 
him. 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 19 

The tone of Calvinistic religion seventy years 
ago was sternly distant from our Lord's tender 
words, " Suffer the little children to come unto me, 
and forbid them not." One reminiscence of Mrs. 
Preston's childhood will serve to show how cruelly 
unwise and unlike their Master some of those 
very good Christians were in this respect. Mrs. 
Preston used to tell us, with a shiver at the recol- 
lection (and her little hearers shivered with her), 
of a certain Sabbath afternoon when the child, 
playing out in God's sunshine and sweet air, was 
caught by a solemn-faced theological student, a 
comparative stranger, and carried off to a darkened 
room, to be questioned about the safety of her 
soul ! The little one was hardly old enough to 
know that she had a soul, and certainly its interests 
could have been safely left with her Heavenly 
Father; but the pious young prig, not getting 
satisfactory answers, told her that he was very 
much afraid her soul was going to be lost ! Let 
us hope that conscience tormented the saintly 
idiot properly, in after days, for putting this cruel 
and wicked thought into the heart of a little child 
of the covenant, whose blessed privilege it ought 
to have been at that age to know only the love of 
God in Christ Jesus. 

One must not, of course, set down to a creed 
the faults of its fanatics. Those lofty views of 
God's holiness, of his all-wise and powerful con- 
trol, which men call Calvinism, were the founda- 
tion stones of Mrs. Preston's character ; but we are 
at liberty to rejoice, as she did afterwards, that 



20 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

God's infinite loving-kindness has had its proper 
emphasis in the teaching of this generation. 

There was another incident, associated in the 
minds of Mrs. Preston's children with this last, 
which also had a most unhappy effect upon her 
childhood ; its evil spell was never quite exorcised. 
This, too, had for its background a happy little 
child and a bright autumn day in which the young 
heart was rejoicing. This time she was taken, 
without knowing where she was going, into a house 
of mourning, where people sat in solemn rows 
(waiting no doubt for a funeral service), and wear- 
ing looks of woe. The child was terrified at the 
awful silence and gloom, and when she was lifted 
for a sight of the white face in its coffin, and her 
warm little hand was taken in an older hand and 
laid on the dead brow, the terrible unknown chill 
sent a shock to her sensitive nature from which it 
was never to recover. As long as she lived, Mrs. 
Preston could never again bring herself to look 
upon the face of the dead, not even her best be- 
loved ; and no faith, no hope, no promise, was 
able to banish from her life the haunting, name- 
less dread of its inevitable end. 

There are found only a few letters belonging 
to this period of Margaret Junkin's life, most 
of them written to the friend of her childhood, 
Professor McCay, then living at Athens, Ga. 
They are old-fashioned sheets, folded so as to be 
mailed without envelopes (which were not known 
then), and marked " 25 cents " for postage. One is 
inclined to regret the large part rhyme and senti- 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 21 

ment play in these letters. The poet's philosophies 
were later on put into so much better verse that 
one would gladly exchange three pages of this 
dainty rhyme for half a page of facts about her 
life at that time. But we must remember, on the 
other hand, that it was for their poetical value 
they were kept ! These graceful, unextraordinary 
verses served as an antiseptic, preserving for us 
pages which would otherwise have gone the way of 
the whole century's epistles. 

The first of these letters is dated " Mount La- 
fayette, Easton, Nov. 13, 1840," and is entirely 
in rhyme, being an epithalamium, written to Mr. 
McCay immediately after his marriage. There are 
several pages of wedding-song, and then comes 
this bit of retrospection, which I am allowed to 
quote, with a smile at the word " remember " 
from a girl of twenty ! 

" I well remember all your care (would I had prized it more !), 
To open to my wayward mind the gems of Roman lore ; 
When with you I o'ertraced the paths the pious Trojan roved, 
And sighed to think how fruitlessly the Tyrian Dido loved. 
And when I read the story now, beside me still you seem, 
And childhood's thoughts float o'er my heart, as mist floats o'er 
a stream." 

Commonplace enough these lines are, but inter- 
esting to Margaret Junkin's biographer, as being 
the first word from herself about her childhood. 
Another verse pleases, from the evidence it gives 
of youthful happiness, in spite of its sentimental 
and poetic tinge of melancholy. 

" Why do the birds seem now to pour less thrilling strains along, 
Than when our childish -hearts were wont to echo to their song ? 



22 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Ah, Memory hath a wizard power her halo light to cast, 
On all the cherished images that throng the peopled past ! 
E'en where the pall of grief is thrown across our early years, 
When Memory gazes back 't is through the rainbow of her tears ! 
But these are musings strange for one whose brow hath felt no 

care ; 
For sorrow's finger leaveth not a trace of anguish there. 
Thanks to the higher Power above ! My path as yet discloses 
Few lurking thorns concealed amid life's many scattered roses ! " 

This artless and care-free sentimentality is very 
becoming in " Sweet-and-twenty," while the perfect 
rhythm and spirited fancy give — even this early 
— promise of the poet's riper powers. But in our 
ignorance concerning the details of her girlhood, 
we can but sigh over the postscript, which con- 
fesses there is much to say that had to be left 
out, — 

" Not that I had not room or time, 
But just because they would not rhyme ! " 

The next letter from Easton which Mr. McCay 
kept was also treasured, doubtless because of 
verses which the young poet had written on the 
last page for her friend's wife, then sorrowing over 
the death of a child. We catch in the first pages 
a glimpse of Margaret's life in Easton : — 

November 14, 1845. 

. . . Just now we, that is the ladies of Easton, are 
very busily engaged in preparing for a Bazaar, after the 
model of the recent one held by the Philadelphia ladies. 
Its object is to liquidate a debt which remains upon the 
College, and if its results are at all commensurate with 
the zeal and energy displayed by our ladies, we will 
realize something handsome. It is to be held during 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 23 

Christmas week, and the affair is to be terminated by a 
tea-party, to which all the town people are to be invited. 
So you see that at present I have employment for all 
my faculties. 

This " Bazaar " was not without a sad and far- 
reaching effect on Margaret's life, as we gather 
from mention made by a member of her family. 
Speaking of the breaking down of Margaret's 
eyesight, her sister says : " She did her share of 
the family sewing, — no machines in those days, — 
read everything she could lay her hands on, studied, 
practiced music [she never became a good mu- 
sician] ; did a good deal of pencil-drawing and 
water-color painting ; . . . rising often at five 
o'clock, and studying until after midnight. All 
this laid the foundation for that suffering with her 
eyes which handicapped the later years of her life. 
When she was about twenty-five she had a severe 
attack of rheumatic fever, which continued for 
some months. Before she was sufficiently recovered 
from this, she became interested in a Bazaar, 
which was held in Easton for Lafayette College, 
and did for it some fine painting, which caused the 
first absolute breakdown with her eyes, and from 
which they never really recovered." (This pic- 
ture, a copy in sepia of the pathetic head of 
Beatrice Cenci, was afterwards recovered by the 
family, and now hangs on her son's wall.) 

To a less resolute character, the persistent in- 
firmity of eyesight, which was henceforth to ham- 
per the student to *the end of life, would have 



24 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

proved a mountain of difficulty ; but Margaret 
Junkin refused to be daunted. Ah, that old Cov- 
enanting blood was " game " ! 

This handful of old letters (from which a few 
more extracts will be given) and the dates writ- 
ten on certain stories and poems show that during 
those years Margaret was an eager reader, with 
her own or borrowed eyes ; a busy writer of poems, 
stories, and letters, with her own hand or the 
round, childish writing of a little amanuensis ; and 
that she had already appeared in print as a paid 
contributor. 

The Kev. Dr. T. C. Porter, of Easton, confirms 
this statement. He writes : — 

I am sorry to say that I can give you no recollections 
of Mrs. Preston as a little girl ; our acquaintance only 
began when, in the autumn of 1836, 1 entered Lafayette 
College as a fourteen year old Freshman. She was two 
years my senior. A taste for literary pursuits soon drew 
us together, and a warm friendship sprang up, which 
continued unbroken till the day of her death. Her 
remarkable poetical talent had even then won the admi- 
ration of her associates, and to have been admitted into 
the charmed circle of which she was the centre, where 
literature and literary work were discussed, admired, 
and appreciated, I have ever counted a high privilege. 
Two incidents, out of many which might be given, will 
serve to illustrate how her presence and example wrought. 

One happened during a visit in company with a class- 
mate, Dr. J. M. Lowrie. Miss Margaret, who had just 
been reading Stevenson's " Travels in Greece," called 
our attention to this passage in the book: "A young 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 25 

Sciote, who had returned to his native isle for the first 
time after the Turkish invasion, in 1822, entered his 
father's gateway, and found the dwelling of his child- 
hood a desolate ruin. He wandered to the garden, and 
strayed through its orange and lemon groves in silence, 
until passing a large vase in which a beautiful plant was 
wildly growing, he murmured indistinctly, ' Le mdme 
vase ! ' " She then proposed that each of us should 
fashion independently a poem which would interpret the 
cause and meaning of that sad exclamation. The three 
poems were written and critically compared. 

The other incident shaped itself thus: Seated one 
evening on the porch, our talk began to flow in the usual 
channel. After a while, her sister Eleanor, whose love 
for poetry was not so intense, put in a remonstrance, 
with a " toujours perdrix" and said in a vein of rail- 
lery that it was impossible for us two to be together ten 
minutes without discoursing about the riders of Pegasus. 
She pronounced a forfeit upon the one who should first 
offend in this way again ; a forfeit of fifty lines of verse 
on — glancing gayly over the garden-fence — " on a head 
of cabbage ! " It was the young collegian who lost the 
wager and wrote the poem to a head of cabbage ! 

There are a few letters belonging to Margaret 
Junkin's life at Easton, written to her brother 
George just after he had left home to begin life 
for himself. But they are too entirely the letters 
an absent member of a family likes to receive, to 
be of interest to posterity. They are taken up 
with detailed accounts of events which have lost 
their interest : this one's health ; that one's love 
affair ; the other's illness and deatn ; a great fire 
and her father's skill and masterfulness in coping 



26 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

with it ; sharp differences with college trustees ; 
church meetings and interests; one friend's loss 
of mind ; another's loss of fortune ; the vicissitudes 
of her brothers' experiments in teaching, and in 
practicing medicine ; the progress of the younger 
children in their studies. 

But through them all, three chief interests 
shine : religion, family affection, and a repressed 
enthusiasm for what Margaret must by this time 
have felt to be her special vocation, writing. Along 
with expressions of religious devotion and loving 
interest in each member of her family, these letters 
all contain hints of poems and stories offered in 
various directions ; sometimes accepted, sometimes 
refused, but always regarded by the writer herself 
with that mixture of confidence in her own powers, 
and shy distrust of the worth of her work to any 
outside public, which characterized her as long as 
she lived. 

It is time now to speak of the two years' ab- 
sence of the Junkins from Easton and their 
return to it. Indeed this episode antedates any 
letter that exists of Margaret Junkin's, except the 
one in rhyme already quoted ; an uninteresting 
child letter ; and one other from which we shall 
presently quote, written during that absence. 

In 1841, after giving eight years of toil and 
sacrifice to Lafayette College, pouring out upon 
its interests the deepest affection of his heart, Dr. 
Junkin came to a time of great discouragement. 
It grew out of a case of discipline, in which the 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 27 

president upheld his faculty, while the trustees of 
the college, men entirely devoid of experience in 
such matters, took the part of the refractory stu- 
dent. 

It was like tearing out his heart to abandon his 
"lovely Lafayette," as President Junkin fondly 
called the college of his own making ; but he had 
no gift for compromise, and while his most un- 
scrupulous enemy could not suspect him of any 
self-seeking or dishonesty of purpose, he did not 
always inspire his best friends with confidence in 
his judgment. Many of his opinions were ahead 
of his time, and have since been justified ; but 
with all his great qualities, he lacked that serene 
equipoise of temper and speech, necessary to a 
successful leader of men. 

At this crisis in the affairs of Lafayette College, 
Dr. Junkin was elected to the presidency of Miami 
University, at Oxford, Ohio, and with keen regret 
decided to resign to other hands the Easton enter- 
prise, so dear to his heart and so successful under 
his management. It must have been grateful to 
this sore heart to receive, on leaving Easton, an 
impromptu tribute of love from almost the entire 
population ; a great crowd of citizens, young and 
old, lining the river-bank in a pouring rain, as the 
Junkins set out by boat to Philadelphia. 

Of those years in Ohio Mrs. Preston was rarely 
heard to speak, so far as we, who knew her later, 
can remember. The family made friends there, as 
they did wherever they set up their household 
gods ; but Dr. Junkin had taken the helm of this 



28 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

State College in a time of great agitation, and 
from first to last he was buffeted by storm and 
stress. Another man, even as honest a man as 
George Junkin, might have soothed the agitation 
and disarmed hostility ; but the new president of 
Miami had no such gifts. His Calvinism, his anti- 
abolition views, and his prompt punishment of 
unworthy conduct among students accustomed to 
lax discipline, kept several bands of enemies on 
the warpath, and the years he devoted to Miami 
were tempestuous times for himself and his fam- 

ily. 

Only one letter remains, bearing the Oxford, 
Ohio, postmark. It is to Margaret's favorite cousin, 
Miss Helen Dickey, of Oxford, Penn. As one un- 
folds the large sheet, as large as a dinner napkin, 
and finds four closely written pages, crossed in 
several places by the delicate, beautiful handwrit- 
ing already characteristic of our poet, one expects 
a full chapter of life experiences at that time. It 
is, on the contrary, a girlish effusion, full of senti- 
mentality, which, however natural at her age, the 
writer of the letter never intended for the public. 

The tone of this letter is distinctly buoyant, in 
spite of the various trials chronicled in it. Finan- 
cial difficulties, disappointment in her brothers' 
plans, her mother's frail health, the uncongenial 
climate, and especially the persecution her father 
was undergoing — all these things are told in 
words which show Margaret's keen sympathy and 
share in them all. But the " vernal flush " of 
which she wrote almost enviously later in life, — 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 29 

" With all its clear auroral glory 
Enrobed her like a fairy queen, 
Within a realm of fairy story," — 

and the very breath of morning exhales from these 
yellow, faded, old pages. 

The story of her father's trials, which were in a 
few months to end by a return to Easton, is told 
in this letter, but need not be given here. Mar- 
garet writes to her girl cousin in girl fashion : " As 
to coming East this summer (though I wish it — 
oh, how much !), I might as well talk of a voyage 
to Cochin China. I give it up with a sigh. Ellie 
— dear Ellie — 4 longs to go somewhere,' but since 
she cannot, is going to be contented at home. 
When she gets letters from her young friends, 
and they tell of parties, fine dresses, company, and 
' loads of beaux,' she cannot help but wish herself 
where she might share such things. But, good 
humor prevails, and she soon grows contented 
again." 

On another page of this letter, the young writer 
says, " We have much cause for gratitude. What 
I have said may seem like complaint, but dearest, 
it is not. When there is so much sorrow in the 
world, I would not dare to murmur if we too are 
called to bear a small share of the burden ; for 
small are all our troubles, compared with many 
that we constantly hear of." 

The trials of the family at Miami University 
were almost over when this was written. In Oc- 
tober, 1844, Dr. Junkin was recalled to Easton 
and to the presidency of his beloved college by 



30 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

a unanimous vote of Lafayette's trustees and the 
flattering urgency of Easton's citizens. His salary 
was now assured to him, and the financial respon- 
sibility of the college assumed by the proper au- 
thorities. 

For four successful years Dr. Junkin continued 
at the head of this college, which was all the while 
growing in numbers and reputation. "Our col- 
lege," Margaret writes to Mr. McCay in 1845, 
" is in very successful operation at present. The 
number of students on the ground is over one hun- 
dred ; the community take an interest in it which 
they never so thoroughly took before, and there is 
reason to think that hereafter there will be smooth 
sailing." 

But in a few years the skies were again dark 
with clouds of hostility. This time the trouble 
began with animosity in the Easton Presbyterian 
Church, because of Dr. Junkin's connection with a 
plan for organizing a second and in his opinion a 
much-needed church. It did not seem to lie in this 
vehement soul to live peaceably with those who 
opposed what he thought right. Several of his 
trustees were officers and members of the old 
church, and their ill will soon involved the college 
in a contention with its president. 

One would hardly expect a man in the prime of 
such vigor and firmness as Dr. Junkin possessed 
to give up successful work on account of dis- 
couragements like these ; but another trial was 
overshadowing him, one from God's hand, not 
man's, and it seemed to point to a removal from 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 31 

Easton. This was the failing health of Joseph 
Junkin, the second son, who had developed signs 
of pulmonary trouble, and whose condition de- 
manded a milder climate. 

The call to Washington College, Virginia, came 
at this time of perplexity as to public duties and 
anxiety in the hitherto happy home circle ; and in 
spite of a tremendous demonstration of good will 
on the part of the students and citizens of Easton, 
Dr. Junkin accepted the presidency of Washing- 
ton College, and with his family removed to Lex- 
ington, Va., in the fall of 1848. 

This second farewell to Easton sharply divides 
Margaret Junkin's life, and fixes her earthly des- 
tiny. Henceforth her lot is cast with the South- 
ern people, who eagerly claim her as their poet, 
and boast of her work as the product of Southern 
talent. But Mrs. Preston herself never forswore 
allegiance to her native State, even in the dark 
days of war, when prejudice was most bitter. While 
her sympathy was with the cause of her adopted 
people, and her prayer was for their success, she 
believed in the honesty and patriotism of the 
North, and bravely risked the friendship of those 
she loved, and upon whose good will her happiness 
depended, rather than acquiesce in the universal 
denunciation of " the enemy," which prevailed both 
North and South. 

Since the next chapter opens a new era in 
Margaret Junkin's life, we may now pause, and 
looking back over the sixteen years at Easton, 
credit them with the formation of her religious 



32 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

character and the development and expansion and 
quickening of her intellectual life. 

The influence of her family life, elevating and yet 
demanding self-denial and even drudgery, has al- 
ready been shown. The association with cultivated 
and refined people is taken for granted in a college 
president's family ; but there was one element in 
her Easton training which her brother George 
points out as having perhaps a good deal to do 
with forming her poetic and artistic tastes. This 
was the beautiful and highly romantic scenery of 
Easton, by which she was surrounded from child- 
hood. One who has looked upon the wooded hills, 
the fertile fields, the shining waters of this locality, 
can readily picture the young dreamer and artist 
and poet, framed in the rosy dawns and glowing 
sunsets, the white wintry beauty, and smiling 
summer fairness of such a landscape. 

A single poem of those days, when Margaret 
was about sixteen, may be given as a fair sample 
of the sweet versifying accomplished during her 
immature years. There are several volumes of 
such verses extant, which she only preserved as 
mementos of her youth, not counting them of any 
value nor giving them any place in her published 
volumes ; but their inferiority to her later work 
only serves to mark the steady advance of her 
powers. Even in these early poems, however, one 
finds unusual music of rhythm and delicacy of 
fancy, qualities for which she was afterwards held 
to be conspicuous. 



THE DAYS OF HER YOUTH 33 

TWILIGHT THOUGHTS 

The scene is sweetly soothing now, 

The moon is shining fair ; 
Its shadows dance upon my brow, 

And tremble in my hair : 
Its astral beams so brightly fall, 

They ought to make me gay, 
And from my moistened lashes call 

The starting tear away. 

'T is not a night on which to weep ; 

And yet this silent sky 
Has wakened thoughts and feelings deep, 

And summoned to my eye 
A drop that dims my reaching sight, 

And all my vision mars 
With such distortion, that the night 

Hath thousands more of stars. 

If from amidst those worlds that blaze 

Majestically fair, 
The hand that lit them should erase 

The faintest trembler there, — 
We would not miss one lessened ray — 

One scintillation gone, — 
While yet within Heaven's radiant way 

Such myriads sparkled on ! 

I walk this earth with countless forms 

Repassing at my side, 
In each of which a spirit warms 

A temple deified, — 
Where dwells a life whose mystic light 

Was kindled at the shrine 
Of God himself, — an effluence bright 

That stamps the source divine. 

Though I have part and portion too 

In gifts so strangely high, — 
'T will lightly matter, but to few, 

How, when, or where I die : 



34 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

The vision that would fail to mark 

Stars, lost from Heaven's broad scroll — 

Would fail, as well, to miss the spark 
That twinkled from a soul ! 

I must content myself to pass 

As a receding wave, 
Or one among the blades of grass, 

That fade upon my grave ; 
To die as summer blossoms die, 

Beneath the frost-breath hoar, — 
Yet they shall come again, — but I, 

I can return no more ! 

No more — no more — to bid them wake 

Old memories fond and deep, 
Nor of my spirit-presence make 

Them conscious — save in sleep : 
Could I be in their midst again, 

And their sweet brows have kissed — 
'T would be a sense akin to pain 

To find — I was not missed ! 

To learn that in the heart whose love 

Was once my proudest store, 
The place I held all else above, 

Was held for me — no more : 
To see some other idol's place 

On what was once my throne, — 
While not a single memory strays 

To her beneath the stone. 

With sadden'd musings such as these, 

I 've dimmed the moonlit hour, — 
How vainly ! Spirit-mysteries 

Are heedless of the power 
Of earth-bound ties : if Heaven will give 

A trust serene and high, — 
'T will matter not, if thus I live, 

How, when, or where I die ! 



CHAPTER III 

LEXINGTON 

The late Dr. John Hall, of New York City, some 
years before his death was invited to preach the 
baccalaureate sermon to the students of Washing- 
ton and Lee University, Lexington, Va. When 
he rose before the large audience that filled the 
University Chapel, gathered from the town and 
county, the people were almost startled by the 
expression of affectionate greeting on his face: 
"My friends," he said, "I am not a stranger 
among you, though I have never looked into your 
eyes until now ; for the faces that I see before me 
are the faces of my Scotch-Irish people whom I 
left behind in the north of Ireland ; my kinsmen 
— I greet you ! " 

So the Junkins might have said, when, after a 
weary, roundabout journey, by steamboat from 
Baltimore to Fredericksburg, by rail to Gordons- 
ville, and thence by stage-coach, they reached the 
village of Lexington, late in the fall of 1848. 
The people with whom their lot was now cast 
were descendants of that bold stream of immi- 
grants which rolled down through Pennsylvania, 
into the Valley of Virginia, and on through North 
Carolina into South Oarolina and Georgia, — those 



36 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

pioneers who had been fitted by their God-fearing 
love of liberty, their enduring of hardships, their 
overcoming of difficulties, to found a race and 
establish a government. 

Their descendants were, they are still, a quiet, 
undemonstrative race; more careful of truth than 
of pretty politeness of speech; dignified rather 
than graceful; earnestly religious, but not very 
tolerant of any other than the simple form of 
Presbyterian worship and church government; 
intensely proud of their Scotch-Irish race; good 
lovers; good haters; unfaltering in courage; im- 
movable in their convictions; rather dull, per- 
haps, as pleasure- seekers ; but with active and alert 
minds, addressing themselves to the upholding 
of their country, to the advancement of public 
welfare, and especially to the education of their 
children. 

Keligion — Education — and Political Honesty ! 
What triumvirate could have been more exactly 
suited to George Junkin, preacher, teacher, and 
reformer ? 

Dr. Junkin' s wife and children had followed 
him with willing loyalty from Milton to German- 
town, to Easton, to Ohio, and everywhere had 
made friends; everywhere had found happiness, 
even in the midst of difficulties. But Lexington 
claims to have furnished for them the most con- 
genial and peaceful home of their lives. 

Dr. Junkin did not find as many students at 
Washington College as he thought such an insti- 
tution had a right to expect; but he found, his 



LEXINGTON 37 

biographer says, the morale of the student body 
so high, the discipline so good, the harmony be- 
tween trustees and faculty so cordial, that the new 
president was free for almost the first time in his 
life to devote himself without friction, and without 
the jars of reorganization, to administering the 
duties of his office, to advancing the standard of 
education, and to the influencing of young lives. 
Those of us who remember him, and those who 
study the record of his life, see that the energies 
thus relieved of uncongenial tasks, rose up straight- 
way in many high endeavors for the good of man- 
kind. But the writer needs to be reminded that 
these pages are intended as a memorial of the 
daughter; that daughter's own enthusiasm seems 
to creep into the pen, so willingly does it run to 
portray the father. 

The Junkins were received in Lexington with 
something nearer akin to enthusiasm than these 
sonsie Scotch-Irish often exhibited, and the gifted 
eldest daughter was especially admired and sought 
after. I quote from one who was a mere child at 
the time the strangers came to Lexington, whose 
life afterward came into close and intimate rela- 
tionship with the poet; one who is — alas! no 
longer here to enrich these pages with further 
reminiscences : — 

" Miss Maggie — as we always called her, was 
the object of my secret, enthusiastic worship. She 
was not exactly pretty, but her slight figure, fair 
complexion, and beautiful auburn curls furnished 
a piquant setting for 'her refined, intelligent coun- 



38 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

tenance, which made up for the lack of mere 
beauty. I used to thrill with admiration as I 
watched her riding at a swift gallop, a little black 
velvet cap showing off her fairness, the long curls 
blowing about her face. 

"Her manner to us younger girls was delight- 
ful; never patronizing nor supercilious, but most 
sweet and engaging. We wondered that a person 
who could write poetry, which seemed to our lim- 
ited experience a sort of miraculous gift, should 
condescend to talk to us about our studies and 
games as if she were one of us. She never talked 
about herself — we wished that she would — she 
did not betray the slightest sense of superiority, 
except in the matter of wider privileges, such as 
acquaintance with libraries, pictures, etc., and 
these experiences she seemed eager to share, con- 
stantly lending us books and magazines, repeating 
poetry to us (other people's poetry), and talking 
in a way that charmed us about pictures, artists, 
and authors." 

This testimony to Mrs. Preston's modesty fol- 
lows the record of her long life. On one of her 
last visits to Philadelphia, some time in the eight- 
ies, a magazine editor sought her acquaintance, 
with flattering eagerness, to ask for contributions 
for his pages. She was gratified at the request, 
and quite willing to give him the poems he asked 
for, but it was all her friends could do to induce 
her to see this gentleman himself ! She declared 
that she had never submitted to literary inter- 
views, and she never would! However, when 



LEXINGTON 39 

dragged almost by force into the library, she en- 
joyed the interview exceedingly, and charmed the 
stranger by her unaffected cordiality, not less 
than by her appreciation of all literary matters 
touched upon. 

Miss Rebecca Glasgow, who was then a young 
lady in Lexington society, and who became one 
of Margaret's dearest friends, remembers how 
much admiration was expressed by the gentlemen 
of the town for the interesting and vivacious con- 
versation of the young stranger, especially when 
the excitement of an evening party gave a sparkle 
and charm to her otherwise rather shy manner. 

The youngest daughter of the Junkin family, 
who was a child at the time of this removal to Vir- 
ginia, says : — 

"My first memory of Lexington is of arriv- 
ing at midnight, in a December snowstorm, after 
a twelve hours' ride from Staunton, in an old stage- 
coach. This was before there was a turnpike or 
plank-road, and the ups and downs we had that 
night made an impression on our bodies as well as 
our minds ! Father, mother, and brother Joe had 
gone a few days earlier. We were received with 
the greatest kindness by the Lexington people, 
and soon made many very pleasant friends. The 
kindness of everybody in our sorrow, which came 
soon after, we never forgot. I do not know any- 
where of people more sympathetic, and kinder in 
trouble of any sort. 

"We soon began to feel at home, and to fall 
into the Lexington Ways of living, and I think we 



40 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

were all very happy. For those of us who made it 
our home, it was afterwards the scene of our great- 
est happiness and greatest sorrow; and as nothing 
tests the love and kindness of friends like emer- 
gencies, we proved that of the Lexington people. 

"As I was only a child, I do not remember as 
much about society as an older person would ; but I 
remember this, — that almost always after coming 
home, Maggie would report to mother, who was 
deaf, and on that account went out very little, the 
delightful conversations she had had with some of 
the many cultivated men connected with the liter- 
ary institutions. This habit of telling everything 
to our mother I remember most pleasantly. We 
never went out, even on the most trivial errand, 
that we did not sit down and tell her everything 
we had seen and done and heard, so that she did 
not feel so cut off from the world around her as 
many deaf people do. 

"From the time we went to Lexington, we all 
used to take delightful long rambles, rather to 
the surprise of Lexington people, who were not 
quite so energetic. We found the earliest spring 
flowers on the ■ Cliffs, ' and ' Cave Spring ' was 
a favorite spot to walk to (several miles from 
town), stopping always for a rest at the pictur- 
esque ruins of old ' Liberty Hall. ' " 

There are two or three letters before me, written 
during these first years in Virginia, which enable 
us to see life through the eyes of Margaret her- 
self. The following extracts from one of them 
paint the picture of her new home in bright colors ; 



LEXINGTON 41 

and if the colors are a little brighter than nature's, 
was not the artist poet as well as painter? 

Sept. 9, 1852, Lexington, Va. 

You have been pitying me, dear J., this summer, 
have n't you ? Tied down as you know I have been to 
my quiet country home, while you have had the pleasure 
of starring it at Newport, and Sharon, and Saratoga, 
and how many more places of fashionable resort your 
next letter has yet to tell me. Well, if such has been 
the case, I have only to say that your commiseration is 
very superfluous ; for I question if your migratory life 
has had as many of the elements of happiness centering 
in it as my stationary one. 

. . . Why did you not accept our invitation to come 
down and breathe the sweet pure air of our Virginia 
mountains, instead of whirling off to those everlasting 
" Springs," where life seems to my rustic taste the most 
artificial thing in the world? . . . You should have 
risen while the birds were at their first overture — for 
you cannot imagine what a peal of vocalization ushers 
in our day — such, I promise you, as all the Parodis and 
Linds and Albonis in the world could never equal. 
Uncle Felix should have had horses saddled for us, as he 
has had for E. and myself all summer, at half-past five 
o'clock; and what a gallop we should have enjoyed, 
over misty hills, down into little green shaded glens, 
under overhanging branches, all sparkling with silvery 
dew. And what views — " beautiful exceedingly " — I 
should have delighted to point out to you ! They would 
have appealed to your admiring gaze with such power 
as to " haunt you like a passion," seen under the bright- 
ness and breezy freshness of " one of those heavenly 
days that cannot die." * 



42 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

And then, as the ascending sun rose higher over the 
mountains, and the full orchestra of bird music began to 
settle into a subdued murmur that seemed fading away 
into the forests, and the canter of four or five miles 
through the bracing atmosphere whetted our appetites, 
we would turn our horses' heads and scamper away 
at the same brisk pace homewards. Then you should 
have changed your riding gear — not for any such 
elaborate toilette as the belle of the Springs is expected 
to appear in, but for the simplest of white morning 
dresses, and with glowing cheeks and brightened eyes, 
and a sense of invigoration which nothing short of such 
a gallop can impart, you should have sat down to an old 
Virginia breakfast. 

As to occupation for the forenoon, why here is the 
" Knickerbocker " and " Harper " and the " Eclectic " 
and such free access as you might fancy to my last 
package of new books. Then we could put our two 
heads together, and get up a pretty bit of criticism 
about some of the literary debutantes of the day. We 
might pitch upon Alice Cary's " Clovernook," for ex- 
ample, and you would agree with me, I know, in think- 
ing it much overpraised. 

[There follows a comparison of Miss Cary with 
Miss Mitford]. 

Or, while E. and I finished up the sketches taken 
in our last walk, you should read aloud to us " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," till the blood flashed indignantly up to 
your cheek, and you felt disposed to spurn Virginia soil 
beneath your feet. I, in the mean time, would grow 
half angry at the one-sided book, and we should well- 
nigh quarrel about the mooted subject, when the sight 
of Homey s happy, care-free, black face and sleek, well- 



LEXINGTON 43 

conditioned person, set becomingly off in white pants 
and apron, as he comes to announce dinner, should 
clinch my argument, and bring you over to a more cor- 
rect way of thinking, before you had got through with 
your soup. 

After dinner you might have a long pleasant nap 
{siesta is the word in vogue now) with grasshoppers 
and katydids to sing your lullaby. The little rockaway 
should be at the door at six, if you chose to take a 
drive ; or we might walk to " The Cliffs " to see the sun 
go down behind yon wavy horizon of mountains, if its 
setting promised to be fine, and saunter back in the 
gloaming, just in time to have coffee handed in the free 
and easy, social, Virginia style in the library. . . . Yet 
mingled pleasantly up with our country rambles and 
rides, we have an occasional taste of society that is ex- 
tremely agreeable. Dining the other day at the house 
of a friend, I found that not less than four of the com- 
pany had been abroad ; and so we had racy descriptions 
of men and things in other lands, and spicy anecdotes of 
celebrities whom we all know upon paper. I was much 
interested in the relation of a conversation which a lady 
near me had had with Baron von Humboldt, when in 
Berlin. She could scarcely be persuaded of the fact 
that he was over eighty years of age, so fresh and vigor- 
ous is the appearance of the wonderful old man. 

[We have here more reminiscences of her din- 
ner companion on Humboldt's appearance and 
habits.] 

While the servants were carrying around les entre- 
mets, a gentleman beside me described the kind of 
breakfasts he used to take with the Count de Survilliers, 
when he resided in tins country, and I learned, what I 



44 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

did not know before, that la salade was as indispensable 
at a French dejeuner as coffee. But I am not going to 
tire you with all that was said during dinner, how reed- 
birds and rails and woodcocks were discussed with true 
Apician relish, and how as the delightful fruits melted 
away before us, &c, &c. 

As this little volume claims to be history, it is 
perhaps necessary to say that our poet could never 
be trusted to tell an unvarnished tale ! True, she 
used only facts in her narrations; but the poor 
bare facts would have found it hard to recognize 
themselves when she was done with them! It was 
neither history nor romance, but the romance of 
history. Thirty years later than this letter to 

J , Mrs. Preston spent a summer in Maryland, 

in the home of her step-daughter ; on one occasion 
she read aloud to the family a letter she had just 
written to the daughter of Canon Kingsley, giving 
a description of her surroundings. " What place 
is Grandma writing about?" asked a little lis- 
tener, to the great amusement of the rest. 

One whose memory goes back to a time only 
eight or ten years later than the date of the letter 
just quoted testifies that dinings, at which guests 
gave personal reminiscences of distinguished for- 
eigners, were not of every-day occurrence in the 
village of Lexington ! 

Thus, the relations to new work and to new 
society were formed under bright auspices; but 
the hearts of the family were burdened with anx- 
iety during that first winter in Lexington. For 



LEXINGTON 45 

the dear brother, whose ill health they had fondly 
hoped the Virginia climate would help, failed so 
rapidly after their arrival in Lexington that it 
was evident he could not live through the winter 
in its mountain climate. Dr. John Junkin was 
summoned from Trenton, N. J., and the two 
brothers hastened to Marianna, Fla., where, they 
established themselves for the winter. Meantime, 
the tender hearts in the new home at Lexington 
lived upon letters from the South, now hopeful, 
now discouraging. As spring came on, hope was 
abandoned, and the stricken father wrote to his 
oldest son to bring the invalid home to die. Mail 
communication was slow and indirect in those 
days; there was no telegraph; and the home cir- 
cle had had no tidings for some time before the 
day set for return. The stage-coach reached 
Lexington before dark, and drove first to the one 
village inn. There the father awaited his sons, 
and grasped John's hand as he sprang out; then 
turned — poor father! to greet the other boy. 
Alas ! That other's grave had been made in the 
sands of Florida ! 

This was the first of the many partings Marga- 
ret Junkin was called to bear; and never did a 
heart feel grief and anguish more keenly. Other 
mourners learn to submit to the inevitable; some 
are lifted by faith to such a realization of the 
happiness of the departed that grief is softened; 
with some, old age dulls the keen edge of suffer- 
ing; and here and there hearts are seen to rise 
above grief, and assert their natural buoyancy. 



46 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

It was never so with this sensitive, passionate, 
intense soul. She suffered inexpressibly as the 
shadow of approaching trial fell upon her; she 
quailed under the blow itself; and she looked back 
upon sorrow with a poignancy of regret that time 
seemed powerless to soothe. 

Sometimes we thought her unreasonable; she 
herself confessed that such sorrow was unchris- 
tian, and beyond question it was most unusual. 
But perhaps it was the price the woman -nature 
had to pay for her poetic gift: when the harp- 
strings were so finely attuned as to respond to 
every slightest breath of feeling and fancy, how 
could the rude storms of life fail to make havoc 
with such a delicate instrument? Later on, her 
friends realized that at this great price she ob- 
tained a marvelous power of bringing comfort, 
by her poems, to other sad hearts ; and while they 
pitied her suffering, they envied her high privi- 
lege. 

The following paragraphs are from a letter to 
her brother George, written a few weeks after 
Joseph's death : — 

Lexington, Va., May 4th, 1849. 
Mv Beloved Brother, — I feel an earnest wish to 
do what I have not done for a long time — to write to 
you ; and with J. as my amanuensis I shall endeavour 
to accomplish it. Your letter to Father was received 
a day or two since. You will to-day see John, and 
learn from him more than we could tell you in half a 
dozen letters. Father left home the same morning that 
John did, having been requested by the trustees of the 



LEXINGTON 47 

College to be present at the meetings of some of the 
Presbyteries, to present before them the subject of 
scholarships. He went away down the Valley, ninety 
miles from this, to a rough and wild part of the country ; 
returned last night, after eight days' absence ; and not- 
withstanding that he had been preaching all the time he 
was gone, and had been travelling over rough roads since 
two o'clock the preceding morning, he was off on horse- 
back this morning at six, to attend the Lexington Pres- 
bytery, more than thirty miles distant. So you see that 
with increasing age come no lighter labors to him. 

Mother has been very much supported. She has not 
dwelt as much as I have upon the far-off, lonely grave, 
and the forsaken clay ; but with a Christian's vision she 
follows the spirit of her darling child into the mansions 
which Jesus has prepared for those who love Him. I 
feel as if it would be wrong to go back to life again and 
find the pleasure in it that we did before this bereave- 
ment. It seems like treason to the memory of our 
departed one. God intended to wean us from the world 
by this providence. 

Smitten friends 
Are angels sent on errands full of love ; 
For us they languish, and for us they die ; 
And shall they languish, shall they die in vain ? 

One naturally opens the poet's scrap-book, to 
find some record of this first great sorrow of her 
life, in that verse which had for ten years and 
more been her chosen form of expression. And 
as might have been expected, this cloud furnishes 
the background, or it may be only a softening 
shadow here and there, in most of Margaret Jun~ 



48 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

kin's writing at the time. One of these short 
poems, though still showing the immaturity of a 
young writer, deserves place here, as an immor- 
telle, springing from that lonely grave in Flor- 
ida: — 

THE HALLOWED NAME 

I once could speak those simple words 

With gay and cheerful tone, 

And hear them fall from other lips 

As lightly as their own ; 

But now my voice grows tremulous 

And low, as if it came 

Through sobs that choke me, when I breathe 

The old familiar name. 

If suddenly it smites my ear, 

It wakes a sudden start, 

That with concentric motion thrills 

The surface of my heart. 

All other visions break before 

That circle's widening sway, 

Till on the outmost verge of tears, 

My memories melt away. 

Why should these sounds have power to call 

Such sadness to my brow ? 

And wherefore has that name become 

So holy to me now ? 

Why can I only murmur it 

With tender reverent breath, 

As if — the while — I kissed a mouth 

Made consecrate by death ? 

Far off, above a grave that lies 
Mid other graves unknown, 
Strange eyes now see it cut upon 
A monumental stone : 
They dream not, as the brief sad line 
They frame with thoughtless air, 
Through what a gush of tears my eyes 
Would read it graven there ! 



LEXINGTON 49 

Close hid within my brooding heart 

I keep that sacred word, 

Which midst the throngs of living men 

Shall never more be heard : 

He could not find on earth again 

Scope for his spirit's aim : 

Ah, since an angel bears it now, 

It is a hallowed name ! 

The following letter, with which this record of 
the first years in Lexington may close, shows, 
happily, a returning cheerfulness, natural to the 
young hearts whom God had smitten, whom He 
was also healing : — 

Lexington, Va., Nov. 25, 1850. 

As the season for your city parties and gaieties draws 
on, dear J., we, who live within the shadow of these 
Virginia mountains, are compelled to find our sources of 
enjoyment at our fireside. Not that sociality, which is 
the atmosphere in which Southern people " live, move, 
and have their being," is by any means done away with 
by the approach of winter : that would indeed be out of 
the question ; for visiting with them amounts to some- 
thing like a passion. If we wished for some designation 
that would embrace a prevailing characteristic, such as 
we use when we speak of the " fox-hunting English," 
or the " smoking Germans," or the " opium-eating 
Chinese," no better could be found than the "visit- 
ing Virginians " ! Dining people, and being dined, is 
with the real Tuckahoe one of the weighty and impor- 
tant businesses of life ; and the ennui incident upon 
having to stay at home for a few days, without having 
company or being company, is considered quite insup- 
portable. 

But a great barrier to such enjoyment exists in the 



50 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

state of our winter toads, which might sometimes almost 
answer to the caricature which you may remember 
Dickens gives, in his American Notes, of a ride from 
Washington to Alexandria. We do not set up any 
claim to public spirit in the matter of internal improve- 
ments, and are shamefully content, I confess, to let all 
the glory that appertains to them belong to the go-ahead, 
active Yankees. However, we have such long delightful 
autumns that our winter does not really set in much 
before Christmas : but after that — shade of Macadam 
— what mud we have ! We are then obliged to forego 
our rambles on foot, for, unlike English ladies, I am 
sorry to say we are not willing to brave all weathers for 
the sake of air and exercise. Our horseback excursions, 
too, have to be for the most part abandoned ; so that we 
have only the resource of the carriage left us, with which 
we are, or ought to be content. 

A few days since, E. and I were at " Mount Albyn," 
where our friends the G.'s live : and as parties, or per- 
haps weddings, are somewhat in your line just now, let 
me describe one at which, while there, We happened to 
" assist," as the French politely say. 

A circle of us were sitting around the wide parlor 
hearth one morning ; the young ladies busy with their 
crocheting and needle-work of various kinds, and I 
reading aloud to them Hawthorne's new book, "The 
Blithedale Romance," which I had slipped into the 
pocket of the carriage to beguile the way with, in case 
E. might not be in a talkative mood. The volume had 
not been opened by us on the way ; and so it was fresh 
for us and our friends at " Mount Albyn " to enjoy to- 
gether. 

By the way, since I have spoken of it, don't you 
think the newspaper critics are a little too lenient in 



LEXINGTON 51 

their judgment of the " Blithedale Romance " when they 
say that there is no falling off in it as compared with 
Hawthorne's other works ? To me it seemed quite 
below "The House of Seven Gables" in point of in- 
terest, of conception, and of artistic finish. What 
character, for instance, does it contain that can for a 
moment compare with " our poor miserable old Hephzi- 
bah " ? Or what is there in it like the dewy freshness 
of " little Phebe " ? As to the point of the moral, 
either it is not very distinctly perceptible, or my com- 
prehension is very dull. Of the two horns of the di- 
lemma, of course it is safest for me to take the latter ; 
as it is dangerous to utter a whisper that would not go 
to swell the breath of popularity on which Mr. Haw- 
thorne is now wafted along. But I did n't mean to give 
you a critique upon the New England romancer. 

We were busy, as I said, over the book, listening to 
the weird-like chapter of the "Veiled Lady," when 
Fanny G. interrupted our quiet, by a bustling entrance 
into the room : " The Veiled Lady ! " she repeated, as 
she caught the words ; " Where is she ? I must have 
her veil for to-night ; for I have just had such a press- 
ing application from a prospective bride, that I have 
promised that one shall be forthcoming." She then 
went on to explain to E. and myself, what her sisters 
already knew, that " Rhinie," their waiting-maid, a 
pretty and jaunty-looking mulatto girl, who had attracted 
my attention by her amusing imitation of the air and 
manner of her young mistress, was that night to be 
married to a servant from a neighboring plantation. 

You must know that the negroes almost invariably 
prefer to intermarry with strangers, rather than with 
their own fellow servants, even though by this arrange- 
ment they only meet once a fortnight or so ; one of the 



52 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

reasons of this preference seems to be that when the hus- 
band comes to pay the weekly or monthly visit, some 
little present is generally expected, and brought. A 
few pounds of coffee, or sugar, a little parcel of tea, a 
pair of fowls, or a new head-handkerchief, are the hus- 
band's gift, purchased with the eighteenpence that find 
their way to the pockets of any of them who choose to 
perform extra services. The wife, in turn, has a trifle 
for her '* ole man," too ; " one of young Marser's " vests, 
it may be, which she has made look " mighty nice," she 
tells him, " tho' 't wan't no 'count nohow," when she got 
it. Or she has a bonne bouche for him in the shape of 
her pet ducks, which she has roasted for the occasion, 
or a savory pie, or something equally acceptable. A 
lady speaking on the subject not long ago told me that 
her mother had a valuable servant woman who seemed 
to be very strongly attached to her husband ; and as 
she only saw him once in a fortnight, it was proposed, 
as a reward for her faithfulness, to purchase him, merely 
for her gratification, as there was no call whatever in 
the family for his services. " Then please Marm, Miss 
Sally," she said to Mrs. P. when the latter told her of 
her intention, "please marm, sell me — I'd rather you 
did n't own me and Davy both ! " 

Well, not to run away from my subject again, 
" Rhinie " was to be married, and she wanted to be 
dressed as much as possible like " Miss Maria," who 
had been the object of her most unbounded admiration 
when she had been married the year before to the young 
planter " down on James River." Miss Maria had worn 
a satin dress, it is true, but a white dotted muslin satis- 
fied " Rhinie." Miss Maria had had a veil of costly 
lace depending from the orange flowers in her hair to 
her white slippered feet ; and " Rhinie " had been teas- 



LEXINGTON 53 

ing her pet Fanny for " something that would look like 
a veil, even though it should be a piece of Miss Sophy's 
old lace window curtains." 

You know the peculiarity that most slaves have of 
designating their mistress by the name she was accus- 
tomed to bear before her marriage. This arises from 
the fact of a young lady always carrying servants from 
her father's house when she goes to one of her own, who 
of course retain the old name, and hand it down to the 
younger tribe that grow up about them ; so that one 
constantly hears the mistress addressed by her maiden 
name, even though she be a grandmother. 

Fanny had not succeeded in finding anything among 
her own possessions that would suit the purpose of the 
bride-elect. Her sister Sue remembered an old-fash- 
ioned wrought-tissue veil, such as used to be worn some 
twenty-five years back by country brides on the first 
Sunday of their appearance at church, and she good- 
naturedly went in search of it. So interested did my 
recent listeners become in the anticipated wedding that, 
after various ineffectual attempts at reading, I was con- 
tent to give up the weakly, gentle Priscilla, and the 
queenly Zenobia, for the nut-brown maid " Rhinie." 

An airy summer dining-room, of larger dimensions 
than the more cozy arrangements for the winter war- 
ranted, and which accordingly was not used in cold 
weather, except on the occasion of a great Christmas 
dinner, or something similar, had been granted by Mrs. 
G. for the bridal party. " Miss Sophy's " table-linen 
and " chiney " had been lent for the nonce ; and such 
a whisking about as there was of turbaned heads ! 
Such a running in and out of the great dining-room. 
Such an air of importance among the little negroes, who 
were bringing in irregular bunches of the garden flowers 



54 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

which the frost had spared — white and red and yellow 
chrysanthemums, with sprigs of cedar, to the little girls 
Harriet and Sophy G., who were busy weaving wreaths 
for the cakes that were to grace the table. 

The list of invitations had been despatched the day 
before, written by Harriet at Rhinie's dictation, and 
most amusingly imitative of the "white folks." The 
child had blotted her sheet, and so had to do her work 
over again, and it was thus I got a sight of the duplicate 
list. It may amuse you, J., to know that its wording was 
just what yours would be, were you issuing cards for 
a party ! " Miss Rhinie G.'s compliments : she will be 
happy," &c. Then followed the names : " Mr. Pompey 
Randolph and lady ; Mr. Milton Peyton and lady ; Mr. 
Sambo Harrison ; " and so on ; the surnames of course 
being those of their masters. 

Dinner was gotten over considerably earlier than the 
usual Virginian hour of four, for the convenience of the 
servants ; and we were duly informed that the bride hoped 
" you alls white ladies would do her the favor to come 
and see her married." At the hour designated, all the 
children of the house, whose sympathies were greatly 
enlisted in the matter, and to whom Rhinie was scarcely 
less important a personage than one of their sisters, 
came running to inform us that "Uncle Adam" was 
come, and they were just going to begin. We followed 
the eager little girls, and together with the rest of the 
family, made our way to the dining-room, which was 
already filled with black faces. 

Fanny G., who was about fourteen, had had the order- 
ing of affairs pretty much her own way, and had taken 
care that there should be no lack of light. The silver 
candelabras were on the mantel, holding tallow candles, 
it is true, instead of sperm ; while the long table, with 



LEXINGTQN 55 

its wreathed cakes and rows of light, did credit to the 
young hands that had arranged it. 

As we entered, and the smiling and tittering and 
grinning groups rose to acknowledge the favor done 
them, one of the young ladies whispered into my ear 
a line of Byron, slightly parodied : — 

" The lamps shone bright o'er brown women and black men ! " 

The little negroes were gyrating about among the 
larger ones, in clean aprons and trousers, pinching one 
another's ears, and pulling one another's woolly hair, 
for very merriment, and receiving in return admonitory 
cuffs here and there, from some grave, white kerchiefed 
" Aunty." 

At length " Uncle Adam " gave the signal by stepping 
out into the floor: he was a venerable looking, grizzly- 
headed old man, whose dignity of preacher gave him 
great weight among his colored brethren. The dark 
mass parted, and Rhinie, leaning languidly on the arm 
of her chosen, glided forward, followed by the train of 
sable attendants. All were bridally attired, and the 
veil floated most becomingly over the mahogany shoul- 
ders of the bride. The hands of all were duly encased 
in white cotton gloves, with the exception of Rhinie, who 
sported — through the favoritism of Miss Fanny — 
a pair of spotless kids. When " Uncle Adam " directed 
the groom to take his betrothed's hand, there was a 
deal of tittering from the difficulty of drawing off the 
tight glove ! At last the bridesmaid succeeded in ac- 
complishing it ; but not without severing the thumb in 
her efforts, at which the titter became for a few mo- 
ments an uproarious peal ; but a shake of the preacher's 
head restored silence, and he went on : " Do you, 
brother Sampson, take this lady whose hand you 've got- 



56 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

a~hold of, to be your weddin' wife, and do you promise, 
afore God and these white ladies, that you 're a-gwine 
to be a lovin' husband to her ? " " Yas sir," promptly re- 
sponded brother Sampson, with as decided a bob of the 
head as the stiffness of his high collar would permit. 
" And do you, sister Rhinie, promise to take this gent'- 
man to be your weddin' husband, and not to give 'im 
up for nobody else, till death you does part?" The 
veiled head drooped in gentle affirmation. 

" Kiss your bride, brother Sampson." 

The groom turned to do as he was bidden, but the 
coquettish Rhinie, forgetful of her position and her new 
dignity, whirled on her heel to escape the pouting lips 
that were proffered, and was lost for a little while to 
our view among the laughing groups that closed around 
her. The remembrance of our presence soon recalled 
her, however, and put her upon her good behaviour 
again ; and she came forward to receive the congratula- 
tions which we stood ready to offer. 

We did not wish to impose the restraint of our pre- 
sence upon the wedding-party long enough to wait and 
see the bride's cake cut ; so with an assurance from the 
bride's mother, Mrs. G.'s old cook, that she would send 
up a waiter of " good eatin's " to the parlor, before she 
allowed anybody to touch a mouthful, we took our 
leave. 

I wish, J., you could have heard the merry haw-haws 
that reached us in the parlor, as we sat with our coffee- 
cups in our hands round the well-filled waiter which had 
been despatched to us. If you had, I do not think your 
heart would have been disposed to waste much super- 
fluous commiseration upon the so-called " poor unhappy 
slaves." After the supper was fully over, you should 
have heard the tum-tum-ing of the banjo, and the echo 



LEXINGTON 57 

of the noisy feet that kept time to it. Indeed, the sound 
was so contagious, we could hardly keep our own feet 
still, and felt like whirling one another around the room, 
from the mere force of sympathy. 

When Mrs. G. thought the merriment had been kept 
up long enough, she sent word to some of the "old folks " 
to that effect. The noisy guests at once acquiesced, pre- 
parations were immediately made for departure, and by 
half after nine o'clock, all were gone, and the premises 
at " Mount Albyn " were again reduced to their usual 
quietude. 

Your inference may be that Rhinie would be quite 
spoiled by all this fuss about her. Not at all, my dear. 
The next morning we found her at our bedside, very 
little after the usual hour, dressed in her neat, every- 
day, linsey " coat " (as the negroes call a dress), quite 
ready to do our bidding, and looking only a little 
abashed as we reminded her of her new dignity of wife- 
hood. 

But surely, if it did spoil our servants a little some- 
times, is not this better than the utter and entire want 
of interest and sympathy that exists between Northern 
mistresses and their domestics ? But enough on this 
subject : so, dear J., au revoir ! 



CHAPTER IV 

LIFE IN LEXINGTON 

Margaret Junkin spent nine years in Lexing- 
ton, before giving up her father's home and her 
father's name, for a dearer name and home. They 
were years which wrought more changes in her 
family than any yet chronicled in these pages, 
and one expects, therefore, and finds, a rapid 
maturing of character and powers in our poet. 

For a few years after Joseph's death, their 
mourning dress separated the family from all fes- 
tivities ; but the simple customs of the village did 
not seclude them from the visits of friends, and 
even of mere acquaintances, so that the intimacy 
already begun with congenial neighbors was fos- 
tered rather than delayed by the withdrawing of 
Mrs. Junkin and her daughters from social gath- 
erings. And in a few years, urged no doubt by 
their cheerful and brave -spirited mother, the girls 
laid aside their mourning, and once more took 
their places in Lexington's innocent and provin- 
cial gayetjr. 

During those nine years, in spite of almost con- 
stant trouble with her eyes, in spite of uncertain 
health, in spite of the incessant practical demands 
of economical housekeeping and the claims of her 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 59 

needle, Margaret made long steps forward in 
mental culture and in the quality of her work. 
Her indefatigable industry of body and mind was 
a natural gift; but conscience applied the whip 
and ambition the spur, and between them the little 
lady knew no rest. 

At this time she had a strong inclination towards 
writing prose, and several stories of hers took 
prizes in newspapers and magazines. They would 
not take prizes now ! Their style was dainty and 
graceful, and there was always a highly moral 
and religious tone in these rather demure tales; 
but she had no gift for story-telling. In later 
years Mrs. Preston was ready enough to acknow- 
ledge this limitation, and to take good naturedly 
our playful gibes at her prim heroes and paste- 
board heroines. 

The stories, however, laid golden eggs, and we 
readily forgive the desire for such results when 
we find in these old letters that the writer coveted 
ducats mainly that she might make gifts, right 
and left. The brother living in Philadelphia 
seems to have been her banker: the fifty, sixty, 
and one hundred dollar prizes were put in his 
hands, and a constant stream of pleasure -giving 
presents, sometimes shrouded in Christmas or 
birthday secrecy, flowed down into Virginia. 
There is one pretty picture in these letters, of the 
little sister Julia having her ears pierced, upon 
the promise of a pair of ear-rings if a certain 
story took the prize ! While we gaze at the little 
maid, on tiptoe between hope and fear, the faith- 



60 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

ful scrap-book relieves our minds by recording 
that the story in question took a sixty-dollar prize 
in the Baltimore " Weekly Sun." 

In August, 1853, came the first change in the 
family circle since the death of Joseph; this was 
the marriage of the second daughter. Eleanor 
was only a few years younger than Margaret, and 
the two sisters had been devoted and inseparable 
friends; dressing alike, walking and riding to- 
gether, sharing the same room, the same duties, 
the same recreations. Eleanor was less shy than 
Margaret, and was generally thought to be the 
elder; she also had more pretension to beauty, 
and was of a merrier, more social disposition. 
The very fact that she lacked Margaret's poetic 
gifts made her perhaps less sensitive and less 
introspective. Her religious faith, having the 
simplicity of a trustful child, undisturbed by the 
questionings of an over-active brain, made her 
one of the sunniest, happiest of beings. This 
brightness of temper, and a calm, clear judgment, 
Eleanor inherited from her lovely mother; and 
these gracious qualities made Margaret the more 
dependent upon her sister. 

Eleanor had had lovers before coming to Lex- 
ington; but her girl's heart had been untouched 
until she met Major T. J. Jackson, the young 
and seemingly unremarkable professor of mathe- 
matics in the Virginia Military Institute, Vir- 
ginia's "West Point Academy," which was also 
situated at Lexington, a stone's throw from Wash- 
ington College. Eleanor's family, while honoring 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 61 

Major Jackson for his dignified and substantial 
character, were perhaps just a little surprised that 
such a grave and ungraceful person should capti- 
vate her heart. But they soon learned to love 
Major Jackson, and to hold the girl's choice a 
wise and fortunate one. The world now knows 
that Eleanor's rather unattractive lover was a 
hero, — one who was only waiting, with the unas- 
suming modesty of a true hero, the opportunity to 
prove himself a great and renowned captain. 

Eleanor Junkin had more to do with the extraor- 
dinary piety which was afterwards so conspicu- 
ous in "Stonewall Jackson," than has ever been 
told. You read in his earlier biography that his 
tendency was worldly and pleasure-loving, and 
that even after his conversion there was nothing 
at first of the devotee about him. He goes to 
Lexington ; and the biographies leave you some- 
what vaguely to gather that the earnest Presbyte- 
rianism of its Scotch-Irish people there laid hold 
of him, and wrought him into the uncompromising 
Puritan he was so soon to show himself, when the 
great war theatre displayed him to a world's gaze. 

But it was a stronger power than the mere in- 
fluence of a godly community. Love, the mighty 
magician, had a hand in this high endeavor. 
Major Jackson found in Eleanor Junkin not only 
the sweetest woman he had ever known, and the 
most charming and engaging companion, but the 
highest type of Christian, as well. Hers was 
the stanch, conscientious, God-fearing faith of 
the old Covenanters, sweetened and sunned and 



62 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

blossom-covered by a dainty and altogether lovely 
womanliness. No wonder the young soldier-pro- 
fessor, tossed hither and thither as he had been 
since boyhood, found in this noble and loving 
woman the rest and joy of a satisfied heart; no 
wonder he adored her purity, reverenced her 
strength of conviction, and gave himself up to her 
guidance in spiritual matters, in which he recog- 
nized her as his superior. 

A little instance of this belongs to the story of 
the Jacksons' wedding journey. Margaret, who 
was traveling with the bride and groom, wrote, 
years afterwards, of a certain Sunday in Mon- 
treal, when "it was a matter of surprise to the 
rest of us to find Jackson going out on Sunday 
afternoon to witness the drill of a Highland regi- 
ment. When the matter was reverted to by some 
of our party, he defended himself stoutly for hav- 
ing done so, giving as a reason the principle on 
which he had hitherto acted ; namely, that if any- 
thing was right and good in itself, and circum- 
stances were such that he could not avail himself 
of it any time but Sunday, it was not wrong for 
him to do so, inasmuch as it then became a matter 
of necessity." 1 

The young wife quietly but firmly differed from 
Jackson, insisting that this "was a very sophis- 
tical way of secularizing sacred time," and gave 

1 This and certain other anecdotes of Jackson quoted in these 
pages are from an article written by Mrs. Preston for The Cen- 
tury Magazine, which the publishers have kindly given me per- 
mission to use. E. P. A. 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 63 

instances showing to what inconsistencies such a 
line of argument might lead. There was no stub- 
bornness in Jackson's nature; it was one surpris- 
ingly open to conviction ; and he said on this occa- 
sion, " It is possible that my premises are wrong ; 
when I get home I will go carefully over all this 
ground, and decide the matter for myself. " Yet, 
as he had not reached his conclusion then, he had 
no hesitation in spending all Sunday afternoon in 
hilarious conversation with some old army friends, 
whom he accidentally encountered. 

"When Jackson returned home, he took up 
this Sunday question, gave it a most thorough 
investigation, and laid down a law for himself of 
the utmost severity, from which he never after- 
wards swerved." 

Mrs. Preston illustrates this change in Jack- 
son's Sabbath-keeping views, by giving numerous 
instances of his scrupulousness in the matter of 
not posting or receiving or even reading letters 
on Sunday, and adds an anecdote of this nature, 
from her husband's experience as Jackson's staff 
officer : — 

In the winter of 1861-2, while Jackson's forces 
were at Winchester, he sent a brigade to destroy the 
canal leading to Washington. The expedition proved 
a failure, and he attributed it in some measure to the 
fact that Sunday had been needlessly trespassed upon. 
So, when a second expedition was planned, he deter- 
mined there should be no Sabbath breaking connected 
with it that he could prevent. The advance was to he 
made early Monday morning. On Saturday he ordered 



64 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

my husband (Colonel Preston, at that time on his staff) 
to see that the necessary powder was in readiness. The 
quartermaster could not find a sufficient quantity in 
Winchester on Saturday, but during Sunday it was pro- 
cured. On Sunday evening this fact got to Jackson's 
ears. At a very early hour on Monday he despatched 
an officer to Shepherdstown for other powder, and sum- 
moning Colonel Preston, he said very decisively, " Colo- 
nel, I desire that you will see that the powder which is 
used for this expedition is not the powder that was pro- 
cured on Sunday ! " 

This moulding influence, exerted over the Stone- 
wall Jackson of the future, was, her sister says, 
"a fitting crown to Eleanor's short and beautiful 
life." For a little more than a year the Jacksons 
lived in Dr. Junkin's home, and then the lovely 
young wife was caught away, to that fuller life, — 

" where her forehead was starred 
With the beauty that dwelt in her soul ; 
Where the light of her loveliness could not he marred, 
Nor her spirit flung back from its goal." 

But before that time came, another and a heav- 
ier blow had fallen on the happy household in 
Lexington. On the 23d of February of that year 
of 1854, the light of the household went out, in 
the sudden death of the beloved mother. This 
was the crowning sorrow of Margaret's life. Her 
father's death twenty years afterwards, her hus- 
band's, and her brother's were to come so much 
later in life, and attended with such mitigating 
circumstances, that, although they brought their 
own heavy burden of grief, they could not be to 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 65 

this passionate, sensitive nature what the mother's 
death had been. For the mother had been Mar- 
garet's daily happiness, her strength in weakness, 
her comfort in sorrow, her reward for labor, the 
sweetener and sharer of all joy. Was this "in- 
ordinate affection," from which one must pray to 
be delivered? When the heavy blow fell, Mar- 
garet's easily aroused conscience accused her of 
bringing this anguish upon herself, by loving her 
mother too much, and her very life seemed threat- 
ened by the grief which overwhelmed her. 

And yet Margaret's letters show that she was 
striving to do her duty to her family and friends, 
and that she acknowledged God's goodness and 
mercy in these dispensations of His providence. 
But she was like some stricken thing, going about 
with the arrow in her heart's centre. And when 
* Mrs. Jackson, too, the beloved "sister Ellie," was 
laid beside her mother in the Lexington church- 
yard, the pall lay heavy above Margaret's head, 
stifling for the time all hope of cheerfulness. 

The only letter to be found, giving her own 
feelings at this time, was written to the dear 
friend of her childhood, Professor McCay, and is 
dated June, 1854, four months after her mother's 
death, and about four months before her sister's. 

You say that you cannot imagine the greatness of 
our loss. Ah, you cannot indeed! Not even if the 
beloved one at your side were under the sod, and the 
children at your knee were sobbing for the mother who 
could come to them no more. For the ties that bound 
us to our beloved have *been the growth of so many more 



66 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

years, that the rending of them asunder must be pro- 
portionately more agonizing. You knew what she was 
to my father in his younger and busier years, and to us 
when we were children ; but you cannot know the abso- 
lute necessity, a necessity which seemed strong as life, 
which she became to him and to us afterwards. It was 
beautiful to see how the world appeared to touch Father 
only through her : how the mellowness of his westering 
sun caught continually such a genial sparkle from her 
radiant face : how he leaned with such tenderness upon 
her for his purest, best joy this side heaven ! And for 
us — for us to live without that dearest, sweetest sym- 
pathy, that wonderful untiring love that never in our 
pleasures or our sorrows for one instant failed us — it 
was bitter — it is bitter indeed ! 

But the inevitable — how inexorable it is ! God's will 
may not be resisted ; or if it is, we only sink down at 
last to a lower depth of grief, baffled and weakened by 
our poor vain struggles against it. I think we, one and 
all, have been enabled to say, even amidst the fierce 
waves that have gone over us, " Not as I will, but as 
Thou wilt ! " At first, the suddenness of the summons 
distracted us more than it did dear Mother. We had 
been nursing her all winter, but had no reason to appre- 
hend any danger, until a short period before her death. 
The morning of the day she left us, our fears were greatly 
excited, but the physicians allayed them afterwards, and 
our darling sufferer herself had, I believe, not even a 
distinct thought of danger. About two hours before her 
death, a startling change occurred, and then for the first 
time we knew that we must lose her — she knew that 
she must go. But there was no alarm — no fear — no 
cloud — no doubt — no lingering. Her dear lips spoke 
only words of cheer for the left behind, and an unwaver- 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 67 

ing trust and hope for herself. Her bright eyes were 
loving and brilliant even to her latest breath. 

Father repeated the old version of the 23d Psalm, 
" Yea, though I walk, &c. ; " she continued the last two 
lines of the verse ; he took up the next verse, she finish- 
ing it, and so on, till the last. 

" Goodness and mercy all my life 
Shall surely follow me " — 

She repeated, " And in God's house " — but strength 
failed her, and what her mortal lips could not frame 
into words, her immortal spirit the next moment, by 
its glad parting, realized — " f orevermore my dwelling 
place shall be ! " 

My dear friend, I never imagined before how easy a 
thing it is to die. Why, I could have lain down beside 
my precious one, and gone too, without fear, had God so 
permitted. In the intensity of my anguish it seemed 
a far harder thing to live. And now that the most be- 
loved object to which my heart ever clung has " passed 
over to the other side," it will be easier for me to go too, 
when my time comes. I never feared to do what my 
mother did, or go where my mother went, and I trust I 
shall not shrink here. God grant us, and you, my friend, 
such grace to live and die by, as she had. None of my 
brothers were here at the time. Eben is with us now, 
and George and Willie come next week ; George bring- 
ing with him his bride. Father is calm and cheerful, 
and says life will grow brighter to him every year, as 
he will be drawing continually nearer to Heaven and 
Mother. 

The letter ends with expressions of love for the 
little daughter in her friend's home, who had been 
given the name of this dear mother, Julia Junkin, 



68 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

in memory of Professor MeCay's early friendship. 
"I hope," the letter says, "that the darling may 
have as many to love her while living, as many to 
mourn her when she dies, as the one whose name 
she bears." 

How little the letter-writer dreamed that in the 
distant future, and in a city far from Lexington 
or Georgia, that "little namesake " was to become 
her ministering angel ! 

This chapter might have had for its caption that 
line of the old song, — 

" Some to the bridal and some to the tomb ! " 

for we turn from these grievous afflictions to 
chronicle Nature's compensations for such inevi- 
table losses. The household in Lexington now 
consisted of the father, Margaret, Julia, and 
Major Jackson, who continued for some years to 
be a member of the family; but three fortunate 
marriages brought back the sunshine of happiness 
to these bereaved hearts, before the oldest daugh- 
ter left her father's roof. 

The letter last quoted, written in the summer 
of 1854, speaks of the Philadelphia brother as 
bringing his bride to see them: George Junkin 
was married that year to Jeanie DeForest of Sar- 
atoga County, New York, a descendant of the 
Jesse DeForest whose letter to the English king, 
written while the Huguenot was a refugee in Hol- 
land, asking help for his exiled brethren, is to be 
seen to-day in the British Museum. 

It was a sad time for the young girl to come 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 69 

into her lover's family, when such heavy griefs 
lay upon them, but along with her dark eyes and 
extraordinary beauty, this daughter of an exiled 
race had inherited courage, forbearance, and a 
great heart. She brought a blessing with her, 
and became especially dear to Margaret. 

The next year, the youngest son, William, then 
installed as pastor of Falling Spring (Presbyte- 
rian) Church, nine miles from Lexington, married 
Miss Anna Aylett Anderson, of an old, aristo- 
cratic Virginia family, a young lady whose beauty 
and charm held many lovers in thrall, from the 
Blue Ridge to tide water. 

A letter from Margaret to the friend Rebecca 
Glasgow, spoken of in the last chapter, may be 
quoted here, to show how these joyful occurrences 
were helping the sister's life to recover its normal 
tone, in spite of the grief that was still so poig- 
nant. The letter was written immediately after 
her brother William's marriage. 

I was greatly disappointed that you and your sisters 
did not come with the wedding party on Wednesday. 
They did not get here till 7 P. M. ; and the little com- 
pany who had been asked to meet them, had been await- 
ing them some time. At half after seven we sat down 
to dinner. " Uncle Young " (an old negro servant) 
protested against a regular dinner at such an hour: 
" Leave off de soup, anyhow, Miss Maggie ! " But no, 
we went through it all, and it was after nine before cof- 
fee was handed in the parlor. I must tell you how 
elegantly my plum pudding turned out : the only one I 
ever made. I wish I could have sent you a slice, for, 



70 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

ornamented as it was with strips of orange peel and 
citron, it was 'pretty as well as good ; as good as that 
black cake you praised. 

Anna looked very sparkling, and the fawn silk which 
she wore was elegant, and vastly becoming. Next morn- 
ing at eleven they left in high spirits. I have heard 
three times from them since. The weather has been 
against them, but a note from Anna, from Philadelphia, 
says that nothing has marred their pleasure ! 

Dearest R., you cannot think how my heart ached 
while I smiled on them on Wednesday night. Mother 
and Ellie were constantly before me, and their graves. 
Only by saying over and over to myself, " They are hap- 
pier than we are ! " could I keep down my tears, till I 
laid my head on my pillow, and let my grief have way. 
But God be praised ! I have only to be patient, and 
after a little while I shall be with my heart's best be- 
loved again. 

I had a very pleasant letter from Mr. Fishburn this 
week. He thinks Berlin a wicked place; no Sabbath 
there. He gave me an account of a visit to Potsdam, 
and Sans Souci, Frederick the Great's favorite haunts : 
but I '11 show you the letter when you come in. Now I 
must go to my daily Spanish lesson with the Major 
(Jackson). Love to each and all, your devoted — M. J. 

The foreign correspondent alluded to in this 
letter was Junius M. Fishburn, professor of 
Latin in Washington College, a young man of 
brains and character, highly educated and accom- 
plished, and a Christian of unusual influence for 
one so young. Dr. Junkin's youngest daughter, 
Julia, was engaged to Professor Fishburn at this 
time, and the young people were married the fol- 
lowing year, 1856. 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 71 

The record of these years goes to show that lit- 
erary pursuits and aspirations in no degree dulled 
womanly instincts and craving for affection in 
Margaret Junkin's heart, for she did not look 
to her muse for solace in these days of sorrow and 
change, and the breaking up of the family circle. 
Except for her story "Silverwood" and a few 
poems, she seems to have written less during the 
five or six years that followed her mother's death 
than at any other period of her life. Next to her 
home duties and church privileges, it was to her 
friends that Margaret turned for comfort in the 
loneliness and desolation that followed the break- 
ing of these precious ties. 

Of such friendly consolers, her brother-in-law, 
Major Jackson, was easily first. His place, as a 
son of the household, was as near to Margaret's 
heart as that of her own brothers, and his constant 
presence encouraged an intimacy which was not 
possible in the case of the absent brothers. And 
then these two shared in a peculiar way the latest 
grief that had come to the family, for they were 
the two dearest beings on earth to Eleanor, the 
beloved wife and sister, whose sudden death had 
been so unexpected and so pathetic. 

Mrs. Preston frankly claimed that Jackson 
never revealed his inmost thoughts and feelings to 
any human being as he did to her during the four 
years of his widowhood. The lonely reserve of 
his former life had been broken up by that brief 
year of sweet companionship with Eleanor; he 
felt, as he had never felt before, the need of 



72 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

sympathy, and where would he find it so surely as 
in the friendship of this sister, whose grief was 
his grief, whose loss was his loss ? 

Two letters from Major Jackson, written at this 
time to Margaret and her brother, show how 
entirely he felt himself to be a member of their 
family. 

Lexington, Va., Feb. 6th, 1855. 
My dear Brother, — Though I have necessarily 
been prevented from writing to you, yet I have not 
neglected to think of you, to speak of you, and to pray 
for you. How could it be otherwise ? Whatever else 
of earth may pass away, I hope that every kindness 
shown to me in my sore bereavement may remain in- 
delibly stamped on my memory and on my heart : and 
I have certainly received much sympathy and kindness. 
I have seen Father, Julia, and Will, each silently and 
quietly doing what would contribute to my comfort. I 
appreciate it all : they are all kind and affectionate ; 
and though I have been much attached to Eb. since our 
first acquaintance, yet I have never so fully appreciated 
his noble worth, as since the hand of our Heavenly 
Father was laid upon me. And dear Maggie ! How can 
I ever make an adequate return for her deep solicitude ? 
My heart yearns to see her ; and yet it may be best for 
her that we should not so soon meet ; 1 for my tears 
have not ceased to flow, my heart to bleed. I cannot 
realize that Ellie is gone ; that my wife will no more 
cheer the rugged and dark way of life. The thought 
rushes in upon me that it is insupportable — insupporta- 
ble ! But one upward glance of the eye of faith, gives a 

1 Margaret ha J been taken to Philadelphia, immediately after 
her sister's death. 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 73 

return that all is well, and that I can do all things 
through Christ that strengtheneth me. Are not his 
promises wide enough ? The height and the length, 
the breadth and the depth thereof, no mortal man can 
fully measure or take in. The greater his trials, the 
more full and ample will they be ; and always coexten- 
sive — yea, exceeding his wants ; and at every step he 
shall be able to say, Though I pass through the valley of 
death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me, thy rod 
and thy staff they comfort me. 

Give much love to Jeanie and Maggie, in which the 
others join me. I have long been wanting to write to 
Maggie, and hope to do so in a few days. 

Father hurt his knee yesterday, by the giving away 
of the stile as he was mounting ; the injury was a sprain, 
though not so bad as to lay him up in bed, and he went 
to his duties in College to-day. 

Lexington, Va., Feb. 14th, 1855. 
My dear Sister Maggie, — Your kind and affec- 
tionate letters have remained too long unanswered. 
Often have I wished to reply to them, but you well 
know the reason why I have not done so. And even 
now, I shall not pretend to answer them : this would 
require a much longer letter than I could well write, in 
the present state of my eyes. If dear Ellie was here, 
she would answer them in her beautiful manner ; and 
how her pure heart would overflow, at the thought of 
your being so affectionately kind to me. You and I 
were certainly the dearest objects which she left on 
earth. And if her emancipated Spirit comes back to 
earth, and sees how we are bound together, and how we 
have a mutual bond of strong affection for her, do you 
not suppose that it thrills her with delight? I know 



74 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

that such would have been the case when here, and I 
believe that her capability of enjoyment is increased in 
Heaven. When I stood by her grave, and that of 
Mother, last Saturday, they were both covered with 
snow, and though their bodies rested beneath the cold 
covering, was it not in color emblematic of their spir- 
itual robes of white ? I can hardly yet take in the 
thought that she is forever beyond the limit of my 
temporal vision ; that it is impossible that I should ever 
behold her again in this world. When I think of her 
tender love, and the many joys of which she was the 
source, and then think of my desolate present contrast, 
which forces itself upon me, the burden is too much ; I 
am forced to seek relief ; but is not that always acces- 
sible, and always adequate, in the blessed promises of 
Him that changeth not? I have always found it so, 
and I have the assurance that it always will be so. For 
He has said, " Come unto me, all ye that are weary and 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest." My dear 
Sister, from my heart I thank God that (though He has 
left me to mourn in human desolation) He has taken 
dear Ellie to Himself. I am well assured that He left 
her with us to the latest moment consistent with His 
glory, hers, yours, and my happiness. For no good 
thing will He withhold from His children. 

Dear Maggie, I did not intend to say so much about 
myself ; it looks so selfish that I wish I had time to 
write another letter ; it would be very different. 

Though I have not said much about you here, yet I 
have thought of you much, and prayed for you much, 
and your best interests are at my heart. I am very 
anxious to see you well and at home, and have looked 
with much interest to your improving health. But 
anxious as I am to see you, I do not want to see you 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 75 

at home, so long as your physician thinks it necessary 
for you to remain in Philadelphia. I did not write in 
reference to securing a place for John in the army, 
because I felt a delicacy in doing so without Father's 
approbation, and he thought it would be best to do 
nothing until he heard from a person to whom he had 
written in reference to John. But if you think that 
John would be willing to stand an examination before 
the Board of Surgeons, I will write on for a warrant for 
him and if the Board is constituted as it has been for a 
number of years back, I will be able to give him a letter 
to its president, who is a very worthy gentleman, that 
I feel sure will be serviceable to him. Should he go 
before the Board, he will find the examination a very 
searching one : but in the event of his passing, he will 
have an independent position. His duties would be light. 
His association would be with gentlemen, and he would 
receive a salary of about $1000, which would increase 
with time. He would find disadvantages growing out of 
irreligious influences, and being ordered from place to 
place, so as to interfere with domestic comfort. 

Give my love to Jeanie and George, and to John and 
his wife, if they are with you. And do write to me 
soon ; you do not know how much pleasure your letters 
give me. . . . 

Your very affectionate brother, 

Thomas. 

" Under any circumstances," Mrs. Preston after- 
wards wrote of Jackson, "he was a man sui ge- 
neris : no one who came into close enough contact 
with him to see into his inner nature, was willing 
to own that he had ever known just such another 
man. . . . Knowing him as I did, and having the 



76 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

opportunity of witnessing his daily life in my 
father's home, I held a key to his character, pos- 
sessed, I verily believe, by none about him; be- 
cause I was close enough to be allowed unguarded 
insight into the very pulse of the machine ; and I 
recall the incredulity with which my declaration 
that Jackson was the very stuff out of which to 
make a stirring hero, was received, before any 
sword was lifted in the contest. 

"His habits of study were very peculiar; but 
then what was there that was not peculiar about 
this exceptional type of humanity? Nothing but 
absolute illness ever caused him to relax his rigid 
system of rules : he would rise in the midst of the 
most animated conversation, like the very slave of 
the clock, as soon as his hour had struck, and go 
to his study. He would, during the day, run 
superficially over large portions of French mathe- 
matical works, and then at night, with his green 
silk shade over his eyes, and standing at his up- 
right desk, on which a light always burned, with 
neither book nor paper before him, he would 
spend hours in digesting mentally what he had 
taken in during the afternoon in a mere mechani- 
cal way. His power of concentration was so great 
that he was able wholly to abstract himself from 
whatever was extraneous to the subject in hand. 

"... After the death of my sister, it became 
the established custom that at nine o'clock, unless 
otherwise occupied, I should go to his study for 
an hour or two of relaxation and chat. But if I 
knocked before the clock had struck, I would find 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 77 

him standing before his shaded light, as silent and 
as dumb as the Sphinx. Not one moment before 
the ninth stroke had died away, would he fling 
aside his shade, wheel round his easy chair, and 
give himself up to such delightful nonchalance 
that one questioned whether this could be the 
same man that a moment before seemed to have 
neither motion, sight, nor hearing. 

"In such intercourse I came to know the man 
as never before. His early life, his lonely orphan- 
age, his struggle with disease, his West Point life, 
his campaigning in Mexico (which was to him so 
full of delight), his service among the everglades 
of Florida, his life at various posts, up to the time 
of his coming to reside among us ■ — all these fur- 
nished material for endless reminiscence. The 
blow of his wife's death was a terrible one to 
him, and when I would hear him say, as I some- 
times did, ' Ah, if it might only please God to 
let me go now ! ' I marveled at the depth of his 
grief. And yet his resignation was very perfect, 
and to wear the aspect of cheerfulness became a 
fixed principle. 

"And indeed, his nature had a side that was 
decidedly sportive and rollicking. He would tell 
amusing stories, and be so carried away with them 
himself, as almost to roll from his chair in laugh- 
ter. More contagious and hearty laughter I have 
never heard. He used to tell of hungry raids 
upon Mexican gardens, where he and his brother 
officers would make their supper on raw quinces; 
of his ascent of Orizaba, going so high that the 



78 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

rarefied atmosphere forced the blood from his ears 
and nostrils; of his gay delightful life in the City 
of Mexico, where, after all hostilities were over, 
the American officers were received into the homes 
of the old noblesse, who boasted of their pure 
Castilian blood, with entire oblivion of them as 
their conquerors. He was very fond of dancing 
at this time, and he had no hesitation in being 
present at Sunday -night balls. When surprise 
would be expressed at this, he would say, ' Re- 
member, I lived then up to all the light I had, 
and therefore I did not then, nor do I now re- 
proach myself. ' 

"He was quartered in the old palace of the 
Montezumas, and it was very evident that the 
charms of society never had so strong a hold upon 
him as when he was mingling freely with those 
beautiful Mexican women. To make intercourse 
at all easy, it was necessary to speak Spanish. 
He resolved to do so; but not a grammar of the 
language could be found in the city, save Latin 
ones. But this in no way deterred him; in an 
incredibly short time, he mastered Spanish so 
thoroughly that he spoke it as long as he lived, 
more volubly and gracefully than his vernacular. 
Indeed, between himself and his wife this language 
became the main vehicle of communication. With 
some families of note in Mexico, Jackson formed 
warm friendships, which he maintained to the end 
of his life. And the silver stilettos and knives 
and memorials of various kinds, with which they 
loaded him on his departure, were always regarded 
as among his treasures. 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 79 

"The name of fanatic will probably stick to 
Jackson; and lie will continue to be classed with 
such men as Peter the Hermit and Loyola and 
Cromwell to the end of the chapter. But a fa- 
natic, a visionary, an enthusiast, he was not, in 
any such sense as were those men. His fanaticism 
consisted in the intensity of his own religious con- 
victions, which, contrary to the wont of all fa- 
natics, he never thrust upon others. The fact is, 
he maintained a degree of reticence in the matter 
of alluding to personal religious faith, that many 
Christian men might find fault with ; and it was 
only by dint of urgency that the inmost springs 
of action were often discovered. In all the inti- 
macy of our close home life, I do not recall that 
he ever volunteered any expression of what is 
called ' religious experience.' But the habit so 
often noticed by his soldiers, of momentarily rais- 
ing his hand as if in prayer, seems perfectly natu- 
ral to one who knew how he construed Scripture 
commands. 

"It was on the long journey to Canada of which 
I have spoken that the military enthusiasm of 
Jackson's character first revealed itself to me. 
My sister and myself stood with him, one magnifi- 
cent August evening, on the Plains of Abraham, 
at the foot of the monument erected to General 
Wolfe. As he approached the monument, he took 
off his cap, as if he were in the presence of some 
sacred shrine. I never shall forget the dilat- 
ing enthusiasm that seemed to take possession of 
the whole man; He stood a-tiptoe, his tall figure 



80 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

appearing much taller than usual, under the over- 
powering feeling of the moment; his clear blue 
eye flashing with such a fiery light as it used to 
wear on many an after battlefield; his thin, sen- 
sitive nostrils quivering with emotion, and his lips 
parting with a rush of excited utterance, as he 
turned his face toward the setting sun, swept his 
arm with a passionate movement around the plain, 
and exclaimed, quoting Wolfe's dying words, i I 
die content I ' 'To die as he died, who would 
not die content ! ' 

"What a revelation it would have been, could 
he have known, then and there, that in a very few 
more years, moved by as pure a patriotism, on 
a broader field of fame, and with a world-wide 
glory, before which Wolfe's pales into insignifi- 
cance, he should ' die content ' ! 

"And yet, though it is often urged that Jackson 
was possessed with boundless military ambition, 
this is not the impression he made upon those who 
knew him in the privacy of domestic life. He 
had some odd ambitions; military glory was not 
one of them. At the period of life of which I 
write, not long before the opening of the war, he 
used to express aversion to some of the aspects of 
a soldier's career: its nomadic character, its want 
of domesticity, its stagnation in times of peace, 
and its interference with the ordered routine of 
a religious life. He dissuaded a brother-in-law 
from entering upon it for these given reasons. 
One of the curious ambitions alluded to was the 
desire to prepare some college text-books of a 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 81 

mathematical kind, that should be better than 
those he could command. He certainly had no 
special fitness for this kind of work, and many 
were the arguments used to dissuade him from the 
attempt." 

Writing of Jackson further on, Mrs. Preston 
says: "That excellent man, Mr. John B. Lyle, an 
elder in the Presbyterian church in Lexington, 
Va., once put into Jackson's hands a little vol- 
ume illustrative of the power of prayer. Major 
Jackson was suffering at the time with his eyes, 
and asked me to read it to him. It was the re- 
corded experience of an humble English soldier, 
most of whose life had been passed in the army, 
and who, on retiring from service, devoted him- 
self to the establishment of Sunday schools among 
the neglected purlieus of London, which in time 
grew up into Christian churches. This man's 
experience of the power of prayer was of the most 
remarkable character, very similar to that of 
Franke, the originator of the famous Halle Orphan 
Schools. I allude to this book because of the 
peculiar manner in which it arrested Jackson's 
mind; for so frequently did he afterwards revert 
to it, that it was evident its influence was far- 
reaching and lasting. Thus the simple act of the 
devout elder may have had a traceable bearing 
upon the brilliant successes and achievements of 
the Christian hero ! " 

Speaking of Major Jackson's efforts for the 
teaching of the negro at this time, Mrs. Preston 
says : — 



82 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

"It was pleasant to walk about the town with 
him, and see the veneration with which the negroes 
saluted him, and his unfailing courtesy towards 
them. To the old gray -headed negro who bowed 
before him he would lift his cap as courteously 
as to his commander-in-chief. 

"There was nothing too minute to be subjected 
to Jackson's unchangeable criterion of duty. The 
following illustration may seem too trifling to be 
mentioned, but it is so characteristic that I cannot 
forbear mentioning it : his long continued suffer- 
ings from dyspepsia had induced a predisposition 
to drowsiness, which he was very apt to yield to 
when sitting for a length of time quiet or unoccu- 
pied. Especially in church would this infirmity 
beset him, though most strenuously and conscien- 
tiously resisted. Still he could not be persuaded 
to relax his military habit of sitting in a perfectly 
erect posture, thus rendering the unwilling nod 
all the more apparent. When playfully pleaded 
with to lean back in the pew, for the reason that 
he would be less conspicuous, and the cadets op- 
posite him in the gallery would be in less danger 
of being injured by his example, or at least that 
he would cease to be a source of amusement to 
them, his constant reply to our badinage was, ' I 
will do nothing to superinduce sleep by putting 
myself at ease, or making myself more comfort- 
able: if, however, in spite of my resistance I 
yield to my infirmity, then I deserve to be laughed 
at, and accept as punishment the mortification I 
feel.' 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 82 

"No harsh judgments or criminations were ever 
heard from his lips. Though most discriminating 
in his estimates of men, he was reticent to the last 
degree in passing judgments upon them. ' Judge 
not that ye be not judged,' he understood to be 
as positive a command as ' thou shalt not steal.' 
Yet he would say, ' It is quite contrary to my 
nature to keep silence where I cannot but dis- 
approve. Indeed I may as well confess that it 
would often give me real satisfaction to express 
just what I feel, but this would be to disobey the 
divine precept, and I dare not do it.' " 

To the generation who knew Jackson as the 
stern military man, the genius of fiery battlefields, 
it will be surprising to learn from this intimate 
associate that "Jackson's organism was of a sin- 
gularly sensitive character, and he had by nature 
an incredible impatience of and shrinking from 
pain. His revulsions at scenes of horror, or even 
descriptions of them, was almost inconsistent in 
one who had lived the life of a soldier. He has 
told me that his first sight of a mangled and 
swollen corpse on a Mexican battlefield, as he rode 
over it the morning after the conflict, filled him 
with as much sickening dismay as if he had been 
a woman. He was once suffering with neuralgia 
of no remarkable severity, as it seemed to a looker- 
on, but he turned with a look of agonizing impa- 
tience and said vehemently, ' I could easier die 
than bear this for three days ! ' 

"Only in the innermost circle of home did any 
one come to know what Jackson really was. His 



84 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

natural temperament was extremely buoyant, and 
his cheerfulness and abandon were beautiful to 
see, provided there were only one or two people 
to see it. He was exceedingly fond of little chil- 
dren, and would roll with them over the carpet, 
play them all manner of tricks, and amuse them 
endlessly with his Spanish baby -talk." 

But enough has here been quoted to show that 
Margaret Junkin's companionship with this sin- 
gular and interesting and altogether lovable bro- 
ther-in-law was her greatest solace during those 
grievous years. 

Of other friends there was no lack in Lexing- 
ton. The two high-class institutions of learning 
brought to the little town an unusual number of 
refined and educated people from the outside, who 
found already established there, as the home of 
several generations, the pick of those Scotch-Irish 
settlers already mentioned in these pages. 

The Presbyterian Church had at that time for 
its pastor the Rev. William S. White, D. D., 
a man like Daniel of old, "greatly beloved," and 
a warm sympathizer with the newcomers in all 
their sorrows and joys. The nearest neighbors 
of the Junkins on College Hill were Major Hill 
(afterwards General D. H. Hill, C. S. A.) and 
his wife, and Professor and Mrs. Dabney, and 
these interesting people became close friends. At 
Col- Alto, Governor McDowell's fine old man- 
sion just out of town, there was a family of charm- 
ing daughters, who, having mingled in the best 
society of Washington and Richmond at the time 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 85 

of their father's public life in the two capitals, 
were unusually interesting companions. The Ann- 
Smith Academy for girls was at that time in charge 
of the Misses Nottingham, English people of a 
specially intellectual turn, while all the children 
of the village — we did not need public schools in 
those days — began their mental training in the 
care of four unmarried daughters of the Eev. 
George Baxter, the former president of Wash- 
ington College and pastor of the Presbyterian 
Church. 

But I find it impossible to continue this list, so 
many names present themselves of friends whose 
affection for Margaret Junkin ended only with 
their lives or hers. She outlived most of them, 
but one of the last of these intimate friends, Mrs. 
John L. Campbell, whose husband succeeded 
Professor Dabney in the chair of chemistry in 
Washington College, used to bring her sweet 
presence, radiant with love and trust, to the in- 
valid's chair during Mrs. Preston's last years in 
Lexington, and more than any other had the gift 
to soothe and cheer. 

One of the little faded notes to Miss Kebecca 
Glasgow, undated, but written without doubt in 
1856, says: "I send you a book to read which I 
hope will interest you, inasmuch as the author is 
well known to you. I wrote it to embalm the 
characters of dear mother, Ellie, and brother Joe. 
You will recognize the characters, and many of 
the scenes are from life. Don't let anybody know 
the authorship; it is a secret. But tell me can- 



86 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

didly bow you like my book, when you have read 
it." This was "Silverwood," the only attempt at 
a novel that our poet ever made. It is a sweet 
story, old-fashioned now in its style, but graceful 
and wholesome. If it had been written twenty 
years earlier it might have attracted more atten- 
tion; if the writer, who was already known as 
a poet, had put her name upon the titlepage, it 
would certainly have been more noticed ; and this 
the publisher contended for, offering two hundred 
dollars more for the manuscript if he might use 
the author's name. But Mrs. Preston always 
said that she was satisfied with the verdict of the 
unprejudiced public. "If it had deserved immor- 
tality, it would not have died," she would say, 
adding half playfully, half mournfully, " it was a 
very gentle death ! " 

There was one page of "Silverwood" which 
survived its obsequies, — the beautiful verses which 
form its "Proem." Ah, this was wrought with 
the poet's own tools, fitted to her skillful art ; the 
rest of the book came out of an unfamiliar and 
borrowed workshop : — 

PROEM TO SILVERWOOD. 

Turning" tearfully the pages 

Which the past has written o'er, 
With the thousand precious records 

Of the changeful heretofore, — 

Records luminous, where brightly 

Joy the sunbeam glows and shines, 
Records with a throb of heart-break 

Trembling all along the lines, — 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 87 

I have gathered of the gladness, 

And the grief that fill the book ; 
Here some grace's shadowy outline — 

There some tender tone or look. 

Transcripts, oh ! how faint, beloved ! 

Dim suggestions of the rare 
Inner realms the world around you 

Did not dream were hidden there. 

Like the spies of old, I 've entered, 

Searching all the richest parts, 
Bringing back these grapes of Eschol 

From the Canaan of your hearts ! 

For I need the wine of solace, 

Which this cluster sweet supplies, 
Since ye pluck the food of angels 

'Midst the hills of Paradise. 

Or as Ruth among the reapers, 

Memory like a gleaner strives 
Thus to gather up a handful 

From the harvest of your lives, 

Like an exile in her sorrow, 

Seeking, 'midst the cast off leaves, 
Golden grains of thought and feeling, 

Dropped from out the garnered sheaves. 

If she has not filled her bosom 

With the full and ripened ears, 
'T was because her eyes were clouded, 

And she could not see for tears ! 

But the poem which is the truest utterance of 
those years, and which reaches at a bound what 
some readers consider the high-water mark of 
Mrs. Preston's work, was written in 1855, a year 
after her mother's death, and published in the 



88 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

"Southern Presbyterian." It is included in "Old 
Song and New," but the version given there was 
altered, more than ten years after it was first 
written. Let us read it here as it stands in the 
old scrapbook of forty -five years ago. 

A YEAR IN HEAVEN. 

A year uncalendered ; for what 

Hast thou to do with mortal time ? 
Its dole of moments entereth not 

That circle, mystic and sublime, 
Whose unreached centre is the throne 

Of him before whose awful brow 
Meeting eternities are known 

As but an everlasting now ! 
The thought removes thee far away — 

Too far beyond my love and tears ; 
Ah ! let me hold thee as I may, 

And count thy time by earthly years. 

A year of blessedness — wherein 

Not one dim cloud hath crossed thy soul ; 
No sigh of grief, no touch of sin, 

No frail mortality's control ; 
Nor once hath disappointment stung, 

Nor care, world-weary made thee pine ; 
But rapture, such as human tongue 

Hath found no language for, is thine. 
Made perfect at thy passing — who 

Can sum thy added glory now ? 
As on and onward, upward through 

The angel ranks that lowly bow, 
Ascending still from height to height, 

Unfaltering where rapt seraphs trod, 
Nor pausing 'mid their circles bright, 

Thou tendest inward unto God ! 

A year of progress in the lore 

That 's only learned in Heaven ; thy mind 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON 

Unclogged of clay, and free to soar, 

Hath left the realms of doubt behind. 
And wondrous things which finite thought 

In vain essayed to solve, appear 
To thy untasked inquiries fraught 

With explanation strangely clear. 
Thy reason owns no forced control, 

As held it here in needful thrall ; 
God's secrets court thy questioning soul 

And thou mayst search and know them all. 

A year of love ; thy yearning heart 

Was always tender, even to tears, 
With sympathies whose sacred art 

Made holy all thy cherished years. 
But love, whose speechless ecstasy 

Had overborne the finite, now 
Throbs through thy being pure and free, 

And burns upon thy radiant brow ; 
For thou those hands' dear clasp hast felt, 

Where still the nail prints are displayed ; 
And thou before that face hast knelt, 

Which wears the scars the thorns have made ! 

A year without thee ! I had thought 

My orphaned heart would break and die, 
Ere time had meek quiescence brought, 

Or soothed the tears it could not dry. 
And yet I live, to faint and quail 

Before the human grief I bear ; 
To miss thee so ! Then drown the wail 

That trembles on my lips in prayer. 
Thou praising while I weakly pine ! 

Thou glorying while I vainly thrill ! 
And thus between thy heart and mine, 

The distance ever widening still ! 

A year of tears to me : to thee, 

The end of thy probation's strife, 
The archway to eternity, 

The portal to immortal life. 



90 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

To me, the pall, the bier, the sod ; 

To thee — the palm of glory given ; 
Enough my heart — thank God — thank God ! 

That thou hast been a year in Heaven ! 

In 1863, this poem, bearing another name as its 
author, was cut out of a newspaper, and handed to 
a member of Mrs. Preston's family, on the anni- 
versary of a brother's being slain in battle. It 
was received with the exclamation, "Why, this 
is mamma's poem!" Such incredulity was ex- 
pressed, that the matter had to be referred to the 
poet herself. She showed neither surprise nor 
vexation : it was not the first nor the last time that 
her poems were publicly accredited to others. 



CHAPTER V 

LOVE AND MARRIAGE 

Margaret Junejn had now passed the days of 
her youth, without making any plans for matri- 
mony. It goes without saying that lovers had 
not been wanting to one so gifted and attractive. 
Why was she deaf to all wooing ? Mrs. Preston 
admitted in later years that an unfortunate epi- 
sode in very early life had closed her heart, dur- 
ing all those years of young womanhood, to any 
thought of love or marriage. "So God saved me 
for the happiness He had in store for me," the 
wife said later. This early romance was built up 
of extremely slight material: a proposal of mar- 
riage from some one whose name not even her 
nearest kindred to-day know ; a confession on her 
part of love reciprocated ; the disapproval of her 
parents ; the dismissal of her lover ; some years of 
persistence on the unknown's side; and a long 
cherished sense of "hopeless attachment" in Mar- 
garet's romantic and tender soul. Voila tout ! 

It is rather strange that one finds so few traces 
of this romance in the poet's verses. But as you 
have read on another page, a time of intense 
feeling was not, for her, prolific in verse-making. 
Nevertheless, her Confession having given you the 



92 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

key, you do find evidence of this experience, here 
and there, in her poems. There are certain fare- 
well verses, published without her name, but care- 
fully preserved in a private collection of her own 
writing, both in manuscript and print, which 
betray by their date connection with this elusive 
love story of more than sixty years ago. Here, 
for instance, is — 

A FAREWELL. 

Forget me ? Ah, I ask it not ! 
I could not bear that thou shouldst blot 
My name from out the record fair 
That memory's volume treasures ; there 
I fain would have thee keep it yet, 
Untarnished by the word forget. 

I would not that my name should be 
A word of magic sound to thee ; 
Nor yet that it should strangely start 
A chilliness about thy heart ; 
Link fancies with it if you will, 
But ah, let them be pleasant still. 

Our paths diverge, to meet again 
Perhaps no more. I ask thee then, 
With thine affections fixed above, 
On that sweet home of peace and love, 
Where undecaying friendships dwell, 
To meet me there : farewell — farewell! 

The sentiment here is certainly very mild, and 
the value of these verses lies only in the interest 
attaching to a poet's first love affair. In truth 
the love of the woman was merely stirred, as a 
bird is sometimes roused to cheep and twitter 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 93 

faintly before dawn: when the sun rises, the 
bird's whole heart is heard in glad song. 

The sunrise came somewhat later than usual to 
this singer, but her music had ever after a new 
and richer note. 

"If I ever marry a widower, and especially a 
widower with children," Margaret Junkin's family 
had more than once heard her declare, "you may 
put me in a straight jacket; for I will never do 
such a thing while I keep my mind ! " She might 
have said, "While I keep my heart" for when 
the time came for her to love a man, she was to 
do — joyfully — this very thing ! 

About four years after her mother's death, 
Margaret was asked to become the wife of Major 
J. T. L. Preston, professor of Latin in the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute, a widower with seven 
children, — the oldest son twenty- two years of age 
and the youngest five. 

Major Preston was perhaps the most attractive 
man Margaret had ever known. Although nine 
years her senior, he was still in the prime of a 
splendidly vigorous, active manhood. He was a 
typical Virginian in appearance and manner, six 
feet in height, well proportioned, graceful, cour- 
teous, dignified, cordial, quick-witted, fluent, mas- 
terful. He had received at Washington College, 
at the University of Virginia, and at Yale the 
best education this country afforded in his day, 
and his natural gifts were of no mean order. His 
taste for intellectual pursuits had been fostered 
by his profession and by foreign travel, as well 



94 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

as by constant study and reading of books old and 
new. He was a grandson of Edmund Kandolph, 
Washington's secretary of state, and the Cavalier 
blood of the Nicholases, Peytons, and others min- 
gled in his veins with the sturdier and not less 
renowned strain of the Scotch-Irish Prestons. 

His fortune was ample, for that time and place, 
and the home which he offered Dr. Junkin's 
daughter was one of comfort and abundance. But 
the thing which most drew Margaret's heart to 
her lover was his earnest, lofty Christian charac- 
ter. Not only was he a knight sans peur et sans 
reproche, but even from his youngest manhood he 
had "walked with God," in a spiritual communion 
that was as simple and sincere and unfaltering as 
a child's intercourse with a loving earthly father. 
He was early in life made a ruling elder in the 
Presbyterian Church, and the interests of Christ's 
kingdom were always first in his heart. 

Major Preston's first wife, nee Sarah Lyle 
Caruthers, had been a warm friend and admirer 
of the gifted young stranger from the North, and 
had more than once said, half playfully and yet 
earnestly, that if she were called from earth she 
would like to have Miss Maggie Junkin for her 
children's stepmother. 

And yet notwithstanding all these pros in the 
question, there were enough cons to appall such a 
timid and shrinking nature as Margaret Junkin's. 
Loyal and loving and true as was this man who 
asked her hand, he was without question impe- 
rious in his temper, and where wills crossed he 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 95 

brooked nothing less than unquestioning obedi- 
ence. That won, there never was a more indul- 
gent, unselfish, generous husband and father. Few 
were the occasions when wife or child tried con- 
clusions with him; but it is due to his revered 
memory to • say that few were the temptations to 
do so, since the law of his life was kindness. 

But a more serious outlook for the stepmother 
was a houseful of children, half of them grown, 
and peculiarly devoted to the memory of a mother 
whose lovely character and life had been the joy 
of her husband's heart and the light of his home 
for twenty-three years. 

That Margaret Junkin did hesitate long and 
anxiously she has owned frankly, but love laughs 
at anxieties and difficulties, and it is not hard to 
believe that her woman's heart, full to the brim 
of fresh, unspoiled romance, was captivated by 
such a lover. A letter written in rhyme, to her 
fiance, during an absence in Philadelphia, will 
show as much of Margaret's heart, at this time of 
her new blossomed happiness, as we may venture 
to look upon. 

Philadelphia, No. 6 DeLancy Place (1857). 
My journey is over all safe and all well — 
No accident happened — no evil befell — 
We " made the connections " — no project was crossed — 
Not even an item of baggage was lost : 
Soon moored in my haven, without a delay, 
To my brother's I quickly was whirling away, 
Where Jeanie, right sweet in her sisterly charms, 
Stood waiting to welcome me into her arms. 
And so, while I rendee the thanks that are due, 
It will please me to think that you join in them too. 



96 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

Now what shall I call you ? What word shall I choose ? 
What term of endearment or tenderness use ? 
How find just the syllable fittingly fraught ? 
The body of speech for the soul of my thought ? 

— Beloved — would anything else I could say 
Be sweeter than that ? — The disciple who lay 
On the bosom of Jesus at supper, has poured 
A charm full of sacredness over the word. 

I linger the musical accents upon, 

That breathe of the beautiful spirit of John. 

I remember the melody too, of the line — 

" I am my Beloved's — my Beloved is mine " — 

So this be the keynote to which I shall set 

The anthem of life that is left to me yet. 

— Beloved — my heart its accordance hath found, 
And it empties its harmony out on the sound ! 

Will you think this is sentiment — sentiment all ? 

Will you quarrel with rhythm and cadence and fall ? 

Will you say you Ve no faith in poetical shows, 

And feel there is truthfulness only in prose ? 

Go into your orchard — look out on its blooms, 

Let your sense revel deep in its luscious perfumes ; 

Let your eye bathe in rapturous beauty — your ear 

Be thrilled with the exquisite music you hear — 

Is this " all unreal " ? — The fragrance you find 

Is just the poetical breath of the wind : 

The blossoms that garnish the trees and the sod 

Are poems writ out by the finger of God ! 

The carols the sylvan musicians outpour 

Are the rhythmical language of Nature — no more. 

Now tell me in frankness and truth, if you please, 

Do you think there is any deception in these ? 

If you do — then conclude that the thoughts I rehearse 

Are not wholly real, because they 're in verse. 

— Oh no ! — when I want to be gentle and true — 
(What I would be always and only to you !) 
When I write the most lovingly — dipping my pen 
In my heart that is tearful with tenderness — then, 
Escaping the wiry restrainings of prose, 

My nature mounts eagerly upward, and throws 
Its full-breasted strength out, as only it dare 
In poesy's regions of rarefied air. 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 97 

— How strangely, while weaving" out rhyme after rhyme, 
The process has carried me back to the time 

When here, in this very same city — as sad 
As tho' from thenceforth I could never be glad, 
I poured on the heart of your " darling- " the moan 
Too bitter — too big to be shut in my own ! 
How startling the contrast ! I 'm writing again, 
But not for the reader that welcomed me then : 
That home is no scene now of innocent mirth; 
The sacred Penates are gone from the hearth ; 
And the eyes that then only with happiness shone, 
Are dim, as they ponder my letter alone. 

Beloved ! I crave you no pardon. I know 

How your thoughts, ere I 'm bidding them, hauntingly go 

To the past, with its torturing visions of bliss ; 

Till the present grows dreary in contrast with this. 

When your arm is about me — and touching my cheek 

Are the beautiful lips that so yearningly speak 

Of the dimness that seems for you spread over earth ; 

Of the love-lighted fire all quenched on your hearth ; 

Of the shock that o'erthrew with convulsion so strong 

The temple in which you had worshiped so long ; 

The work, left unfinished — the energies stilled — 

Ere half of the canvass of life had been filled — 

My heart faints within me, and oft with a moan, 

Sinks scarcely less hopeless and sick than your own ! 

— I doubtingly question my spirit — have I 
Strength to summon the sunshine all back to his sky ? 
Can I think to rekindle the warmth, or restore 

To his hearthstone the blaze of its home light once more f 

Can I hope to rebuild so the temple that falls, 

That no traces of ruins will cling to its walls ? 

Have I skill for the tasks which her hands left undone ? 

Dare I finish the picture that she had begun ? 

— Dear Father in Heaven ! Thou knowest alone 
How void is thy creature of strength of her own ! 
Let me feel that thy Providence surely has set 
Me the work, and I '11 trust to accomplish it yet ; 
And then when called upward, what joy to say, " Here 
Lord, am I, and the children thou gavest me to rear J " 



98 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

— Am I cowardly-hearted ? — Then more is the need 
For the wisdom that comes from ahove me to plead — 
Since with it I 'm strong, let whatever befall, 
And without it, my strength can do nothing at all 1 

The city is looking its comeliest — Spring 

Has put fashion's butterflies all on the wing : 

And the blending of delicate colors they wear, 

Make the streets look as gay as a garden parterre. 

But there 's something half sad in the sight — for I know, 

As I thread the thronged pavements, how vain is the show ; 

And I whisper unconsciously, oft and again, 

" They all are disquieted surely in vain ! " 

Yet this is one-sided : we look at the glare 

Of a city, and think it a " Vanity Fair : " 

We feel not humanity's pulses that beat 

Far stronger than in our secluded retreat : 

We see not the thousand sweet charities strewn — 

The thousand hands stretched to the needy and lone. 

But yet there are countless more charms to my eye 

In the purple our mountains pile up to the sky — 

And the town, with its hurry so feverish, yields 

No quiet so sweet as broods over our fields. 

Now a loose rein to fancy ! Once more do I rest 

Where my cheek feels the steady warm throb of your breast : 

I see your dear fingers in tenderness lay 

All smoothly the curls from my forehead away : 

And the mouth that I praise so — the flexible mouth, 

Full-lipped with the ardor that tells of the South, 

Is breathing, " God bless yon, my Maggie ! " and I 

As trustingly echo the prayer in reply — 

God bless my Beloved ! 'T is thus I begun, 

'T is thus I would finish — So now I am done ! 

The marriage took place on the 3d of August, 
1857, at her father's house, Dr. Junkin himself 
performing the ceremony. The wedding party 
left Lexington the next day for "Oakland," the 
beautiful James River home of Major Preston's 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 99 

only sister, Mrs. William Armstead Cocke. 
Willy Preston, the third son of the family (who 
had come up from Oakland to be present at the 
wedding), and an old family servant from the 
Preston establishment accompanied the wedding 
party to Oakland. 

"I had never had a waiting maid in my life," 
Mrs. Preston used to tell us, "and stood in secret 
awe and dread of Anakie! But Anakie was a 
small part of the ordeal : think what it was to be 
presented on the Oakland threshold, not only to 
my husband's entire family, and to his sister's 
family, but to his old cousin, William C. Preston 
of South Carolina, and to a half a dozen other 
strangers summering there ! " 

It was indeed a trying ordeal. Especially as 
life in those James Kiver homesteads kept much 
of the stately ceremoniousness of Colonial days, 
and must have seemed alarmingly formal to one 
born out of Virginia. The ten o'clock breakfast 
at Oakland was an informal meal, as was the light 
luncheon at one, which was often served on a table 
formed of a single granite slab, built under the 
magnificent oaks. But from the time of the din- 
ner "dressing bell," which was rung at four 
o'clock, the household stiffened into a formality 
which was second nature in those to the manner 
born, but was calculated to embarrass a novice. 
Full dress was the invariable rule. The dinner 
was lengthened into five or six courses ; and every- 
body was expected to contribute to the general 
entertainment, by joining in the table talk. This 

. LofC. 



100 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

was oftenest on politics, though other topics were 
discussed, and those old-time folks read and talked 
of better literature than their children and grand- 
children devour — mejudice. 

Troops of slaves circled around every function 
of the day. You were expected (if you were a 
lady guest) to have your hair brushed, your shoes 
and stockings put on, every hook and eye fastened, 
every pin put in place, and your handkerchief 
and fan handed to you by a maid who held herself 
as your especial chattel during your stay at Oak- 
land. She met you at the carriage, when you got 
back from your drive, took your hat and wrap, 
brushed and dusted you into a perfect state of 
nicety, and then hung around, hankering after 
something more to do for you! 

The new wife bore herself in this great house- 
hold with shrinking diffidence but with no awk- 
wardness. I recall distinctly her appearance and 
manner at that time. She was so slight and fair 
and girlish -looking, in her low-cut blue silk gown 
(sky-blue it was called) and wedding pearls, that 
she might easily have passed for twenty-five, in- 
stead of thirty-seven ; and her low voice and shy 
manner increased this impression of youthfulness. 
But when called upon to take her part in conver- 
sation, she was easily the most interesting woman 
in the company. She never introduced topics, 
nor led in conversation, as literary women were 
supposed to do, and she was at the farthest remove 
from a pedant; but no matter what her compan- 
ions were talking of, they presently found that 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 101 

Mrs. Preston knew more about it than themselves, 
and would, with a little encouragement, meet 
them on their own ground, and carry oft" the palm. 

The old statesman and orator from South Caro- 
lina, Colonel William C. Preston, made her ac- 
quaintance with all his prejudices on the alert. 
He shared the disapproval then felt throughout 
the South of women who appeared in print, and 
spoke with disfavor of "the little red-headed 
Yankee's want of style and presence.'' But the 
old gentleman entirely lost his heart to his new 
kinswoman in a short time, and amused himself 
by drawing her out, making her talk on literary 
subjects with entire unconsciousness on her part 
that she was showing much more knowledge than 
most women possessed of authors classic and mod- 
ern. "She is an encyclopaedia in small print!" 
he declared enthusiastically ; and his old-fashioned 
gallantry found ways of showing sympathy, most 
grateful to the new wife, placed in such a trying 
position. 

But next to her husband's presence, the great- 
est comfort in that premier pas which cost so 
much was the tender welcome Mrs. Preston re- 
ceived from her husband's sister, a woman of 
great sweetness and strength of character. Mrs. 
Cocke combined a masculine will and intelligence 
with the most feminine wealth of sentiment and 
emotion, while her manner had the frank simpli- 
city of a noble child. The friendship begun when 
the tall and stately mistress of Oakland opened 
her arms and took the little stranger to her warm 



102 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

heart, never knew cloud nor chill while the sisters 
lived. One likes to think how it must be now, 
"on the heavenward side of the river of death." 

Oakland was not by any means among the 
handsomest of those old Virginia homes, but in 
one respect it surpassed them all. I remember on 
one occasion driving back to the house from ser- 
vice at the country church, with Bishop Whittle, 
when a member of the family said to him, " Bishop, 
this is not your first visit to Oakland ; you were 
here, sir, twenty years ago, when you were just 
'Mr.' Whittle." It was evident that the bishop 
did not recall the visit, and the conversation was 
deftly changed to save him embarrassment. But 
when the open carriage swept around the edge of 
the woods, and brought the great twelve-acre lawn 
to view, with its eighty or more trees, fifty of them 
primeval oaks, measuring several feet in diameter, 
and spreading out into vast sanctuaries of shade, 
the bishop stood up in the carriage and took off 
his hat. "You are mistaken, Captain Cocke," he 
said. " I might have been graceless enough to for- 
get the kindest hosts, but not those monarchs ! I 
have never seen Oakland before." Alas, beauti- 
ful Oakland ! It is now only a memory. Since 
the first page of this chapter was written, it has 
perished in the flames of a midnight fire, with its 
wealth of portraits and relics, its parchment grant 
signed by George III. , its rare old furniture and 
china, and its far richer belongings of hallowed 
memories and associations. Surely there must be 
a spiritual immortality for such a home ! 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 103 

Perhaps this is the place to say a few words of 
what Mrs. Preston was as a stepmother. Of the 
large family of her husband's children, to whom 
her care was given, only one is left to-day to rise 
up and bless her memory ; but her life did a great 
deal to banish from a wide circle of friends and 
acquaintances and in-laws the senseless old preju- 
dice against stepmothers. No critic could find 
anything to complain of in her self-denying devo- 
tion to the welfare of her husband's family; and 
those who knew her best knew that she spent her- 
self in efforts to make them happy and comfort- 
able. Whatever mistakes she made, and it is not 
claimed that she was infallible, were the mistakes 
of a romantic soul, who regulated her conduct on 
a rather imaginary basis, and sometimes found it 
an unsubstantial foundation. 

Her husband's only complaint of her as long 
as she lived, was that she wore herself out in at- 
tempting things that nobody demanded of her, 
and that were at times pathetically unnecessary. 
Her ardor for the impossible was not always to be 
repressed. But who shall say that heights were 
not won and kept, in these charges that looked 
like defeats? 

The first Mrs. Preston had belonged to a family 
of twelve sons and daughters, all of whom married 
and had children, and these nieces and nephews, 
as well as a large circle of more distant kin, had 
grown up to feel that the Preston establishment 
was home for themall. With the freedom of those 
generous old days, they had been in the habit of 



104 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

coming to the house when they pleased, and stay- 
ing as long as they pleased, and they had always 
found a cordial welcome. 

Surely it proves a most unusual quality in this 
stepmother that no change was made in this hos- 
pitality, and that no coolness was felt by these young 
relations of the first wife. They all called her 
"Aunt Maggie," counted on her sympathy and 
cordiality, and were treated by her with the same 
sympathy and consideration shown to her hus- 
band's nephews or her own. 

Her three-story house was often full from top 
to bottom, and more than once she moved out of 
her spacious chamber and filled it with guests, 
while she slept on a sofa or improvised cot. And 
this, not because she was naturally fond of com- 
pany, for her tastes would have led her to prefer 
a secluded life, but from the dictates of a warm 
heart and a generous nature. 

To the two little children of the family, 
"mamma," as they called her from the first, 
talked often of their own mother; and no one in 
the house was so careful as she to see that the 
dear saint's wishes were carried out. 

Long afterwards I heard her tell how hard it 
had been to control her naturally quick temper 
when the old family servants would say, "Miss 
Sally never did so," or when some meddlesome 
outsider undertook to compare her reign with her 
predecessor's. But no one ever heard her resent 
these impertinences by angry retorts ; " They 
meant it kindly," she said. 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 105 

Twenty years after Margaret Junkin became a 
stepmother, her old friend Mr. McCay said to an 
acquaintance, "I have something to tell you, the 
like of which you never heard before: the step- 
daughter of my friend Mrs. Preston has called 
her first child ' Margaret, ' in honor of her step- 
mother." "You are mistaken in thinking that 
unique," was the answer. "I know a similar in- 
stance." A year later Mr. McCay accosted this 
lady again. "iVbw," said he, "I have something 
to tell you the like of which I am sure you never 
heard: Mrs. Preston has dedicated a volume of 
poems to her stepdaughter." "Now, indeed," the 
lady cried, "you have outstripped me! I never 
heard the like of that! " Perhaps this little story 
sets Mrs. Preston as a stepmother in a clearer 
light than anything I could say. 

For the first four years of married life, the 
poet was lost in the wife, the mother, and the 
busy house-mistress. Mrs. Preston was a notable 
housekeeper. First of all, she recreated her 
home. The place, when she came to it, was de- 
lightful as to spacious grounds, fine shade trees, 
extensive orchard and garden and meadow. Mrs. 
Preston altered and added to the house, and made 
and kept it beautiful, tasteful, comfortable, and 
even elegant. We used to say of her that with 
an inexpensive engraving, an ornament or two, 
a hammer and a box of tacks, she could furnish 
a room artistically. She knew where to put 
things with reference to one another, and how to 
give to the whole an indescribable air of fitness, 



106 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

that no expenditure of money could reproduce in 
those who lacked her gift. 

I remember hearing the Rev. Dr. Murkland of 
Baltimore, whose days were spent going in and 
out of far handsomer houses, exclaim, as he en- 
tered Mrs. Preston's library for the first time, 
"What an ideal place! A fit home for a poet! " 

Nor did she neglect the humbler offices of a 
housewife. In fact the only vanity I ever saw in 
her was in connection with her mince pies, jellies, 
and crullers. She seasoned the winter supply of 
sausage with her own hand, flavored the autumn 
apple butter, and the most flattering guest that 
ever called at her door could not entice her from 
the preserving kettle till the fruit was ready to 
be put into the jars. 

For several years after her marriage, indeed 
until the end of the war, Mrs. Preston considered 
it her duty — she sadly owned her mistake after- 
wards — to do an immense amount of sewing, and 
her skill as a needlewoman was as great as if she 
had never written a sonnet. 

Was all this domesticity answerable for the 
dumbness of her muse during the years that im- 
mediately followed marriage? No, for ten years 
later she was hardly less busy, and yet at that 
time she was beginning the lustrum of her great- 
est mental activity and output. Perhaps her new 
life and new loving ambitions had something to 
do with the blank page one finds in the poet's note- 
book, just here. But there was another reason, a 
reason which she gave, many years later, in her 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 107 

husband's presence, only to be promptly contra- 
dicted by him and playfully ordered to utter no 
more such foolish words. 

"I almost quit writing, after I was married," 
she said, " because my husband did not in his 
heart of hearts approve of his wife's giving any 
part of herself to the public, even in verse ! " 

"Nonsense! Nonsense!" cried the husband. 
"When did I ever fail to enjoy and praise your 
poetry?" 

"Yes, you praised my work," was the answer, 
"but there was an expression in the lift of your 
eyebrows that suggested surprise." 

At the time that Mrs. Preston made this accu- 
sation, it had ceased to be true that her husband 
was lukewarm about her gift ; in fact he was then 
the greatest incentive to her writing, besides being 
himself her teacher and guide, walking certain 
paths of literature with a firmer tread than her 
own. Nevertheless it was known to others than 
the poet herself that the charge was true. Major 
Preston's ideal woman had not a pen in her fin- 
gers ! And he certainly had to overcome a strong, 
inborn reluctance to having his wife's name in 
print. 

Before passing on to the next chapter, which is 
to be lighted by the lurid war- torch, there are cer- 
tain family chronicles to be written down, — some 
of them sweet and bright with hope, others sad 
and full of anguish. 

Mrs. Preston's marriage, in 1857, left but one 
member of the Junkin family unmarried ; this was 



108 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Ebenezer, a young minister of the Presbyterian 
Church, just ordained to preach the Gospel in 
North Carolina. The following summer, 1858, 
Ebenezer won as his bride a lovely young daughter 
of a Presbyterian manse in the old North State; 
"Agnes Penick" became a model pastor's wife, 
and raised up sons to preach the Gospel at home 
and on the foreign field. Her praise is in more 
than one church in our Southern land. 

Mrs. Preston's sister Julia had married, in 
1855, Professor Junius M. Fishburn of Wash- 
ington College, and with her husband and her 
beautiful child remained in her father's home as 
his house-mistress and caretaker. Alas ! Before 
Margaret had been a year married, this girl-wife 
had lost husband and child, and again Dr. Jun- 
kin's home was under the shadow of unspeakable 
grief. 

Mrs. Preston's heart always clung with intense 
devotion to her own people, and this fresh grief 
was deeply felt by her. But there was now a 
strong heart for hers to rest on, and for the first 
time in her life she was able to resist the despair 
of grief, and to bear up with something of the 
resignation which she almost worshiped in her 
brave sister. 

The years immediately following these events 
brought Mrs. Preston the crowning experience of 
womanhood, in the birth of two fine sons. Her 
hands were already so full of care for those other 
children, whose mothering she had assumed, that 
she was somewhat inclined to grudge herself the 



LOVE AND MARRIAGE 109 

joys of real motherhood. "That was one of my 
mistakes," she said afterwards. " I ought to have 
taken more time to enjoy my babies." Her lis- 
tener could not deny the truth of her self-reproach, 
for just here lay one of the weaknesses in a char- 
acter for the most part strong, — Mrs. Preston 
seems to have failed more than once to see her 
duties in the right perspective. She would some- 
times throw herself with passionate abandon into 
what afterwards she realized to be comparatively 
unimportant drudgery, and then weep bitter tears 
over what she and her dear ones had missed of 
peace and home delight, while she had been care- 
ful and troubled about minor matters. 

Many years later, when the birds had all flown 
from her nest, Mrs. Preston was visiting in the 
home of a younger wife ; and seeing her suddenly 
drop some housework, to answer a call from hus- 
band or child for a drive or walk, she said chid- 
ingly, "My dear, have you time to go?" "When 
my husband wants me," answered the young host- 
ess, "I have time for nothing else." "Yes, yes, 
you are right," she said a little mournfully; "I 
wish I had always been as wise." But it is easy 
to see, as we spread the records of her life be- 
fore us, that its over-anxiety about trifles was a 
natural consequence of the fear which her tender 
conscience felt lest she should follow her own 
inclination for literary pursuits, to the detriment 
of homelier duties. 



CHAPTER VI 

A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 

Mrs. Preston had been married less than four 
years, when the political clouds which had been 
long gathering burst over the land in the horrors 
of civil war. The story of that time does not be- 
long to these pages : it has been told, and is still 
being told, from the two standpoints, by writers 
who show an increasing desire for accuracy and 
fairness, and we may hope that the truth of his- 
tory will finally remain. 

But the life whose days these pages seek to 
record was intensely moved and influenced by the 
war, and so far as the stirring events touched her, 
they must have a place here. Fortunately, Mrs. 
Preston kept a journal during the last three years 
of the war, from April '62 to April '65, and from 
this journal enough extracts will be made to give 
the reader a glimpse of her life under its altered 
circumstances. How one regrets that the journal 
was not begun a year earlier, that we might look 
through her eyes upon the commotion and up- 
heaval of 1861 ! 

Before opening this journal, it may be interest- 
ing to read a letter written by Mrs. Preston's 
husband from Charlestown, Va., at the time of 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 111 

the hanging of John Brown. Major Preston was 
on duty there with the corps of cadets from the 
Virginia Military Institute, ordered out by the 
governor of Virginia, as military guard on that 
occasion. The letter was written without any 
thought of publication. 

Charlestown, December 2, 1859. 

. . . The execution is over. We have just returned 
from the field, and I sit down to give you some account 
of it. The weather was very favorable : the sky was a 
little overcast, with a little haze in the atmosphere that 
softened without obscuring the magnificent prospect 
afforded here. Between eight and nine o'clock the 
troops began to put themselves in motion to occupy the 
positions assigned to them on the field, as designated on 
the plan I send you. To Colonel Smith had been as- 
signed the superintendence of the execution, and he and 
his staff were the only mounted officers on the ground, 
until the major-general and his staff appeared. By ten 
o'clock all was arrayed. The general effect was most im- 
posing, and at the same time picturesque. The Cadets 
were immediately in rear of the gallows, with a howitzer 
on the right and left, a little behind, so as to sweep the 
field. They were uniformed in red flannel shirts, which 
gave them a gay, dashing, Zouave look, exceedingly be- 
coming, especially at the Battery. They were flanked 
obliquely by two corps, the Richmond Greys and Com- 
pany F, which, if inferior in appearance to the Cadets, 
were superior to any other company I ever saw outside 
the regular army. Other companies were distributed 
over the field, amounting in all to perhaps 800 men. 
The military force was about 1500. 

The whole enclosure was lined by cavalry troops, 



112 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

posted as sentinels, with their officers — one on a peer- 
less black horse, and another on a remarkable looking 
white horse — continually dashing around the enclosure. 
Outside this enclosure were other companies acting as 
rangers and scouts. The jail was guarded by several 
companies of infantry, and pieces of artillery were put 
in position for defense. 

Shortly before eleven o'clock, the prisoner was taken 
from the jail and the funeral cortege was put in motion. 
First came three companies — then the criminal's wagon, 
drawn by two large white horses. John Brown was 
seated on his coffin, accompanied by the sheriff and two 
other persons. The wagon drove to the foot of the 
gallows, and Brown descended with alacrity, and with- 
out assistance, and ascended the steep steps to the plat- 
form. His demeanor was intrepid, without being brag- 
gart. He made no speech : whether he desired to make 
one or not I do not know. Had he desired it, it would 
not have been permitted. Any speech of his must of 
necessity have been unlawful, as being directed against 
the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth, and, as 
such, could not be allowed by those who were then 
engaged in the most solemn and extreme vindication of 
Law. His manner was free from trepidation, but his 
countenance was not without concern, and it seemed to 
me to have a little cast of wildness. He stood upon the 
scaffold but a short time, giving brief adieus to those 
about him, when he was properly pinioned, the white 
cap drawn over his face, the noose adjusted and at- 
tached to the hook above, and he was moved blindfold 
a few steps forward. It was curious to note how the 
instincts of nature operated to make him careful in 
putting out his feet, as if afraid he would walk off 
the scaffold. The man who stood unblenched on the 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 113 

brink of eternity was afraid of falling a few feet to the 
ground ! 

He was now all ready. The sheriff asked him if he 
should give him a private signal, before the fatal mo- 
ment. He replied in a voice that sounded to me un- 
naturally natural — so composed was its tone and so 
distinct its articulation — that " it did not matter to him, 
if only they would not keep him too long waiting." He 
was kept waiting, however. The troops that had formed 
his escort had to be put in their proper position, and 
while this was going on, he stood for ten or fifteen min- 
utes blindfold, the rope around his neck, and his feet on 
the treacherous platform, expecting instantly the fatal 
act. But he stood for this comparatively long time up- 
right as a soldier in position, and motionless. I was close 
to him, and watched him narrowly, to see if I could per- 
ceive any signs of shrinking or trembling in his person. 
Once I thought I saw his knees tremble, but it was 
only the wind blowing his loose trousers. His firmness 
was subjected to still further trial by hearing Colonel 
Smith announce to the sheriff, " We are all ready, Mr. 
Campbell." The sheriff did not hear, or did not compre- 
hend, and in a louder tone the announcement was made. 
But the culprit still stood steady, until the sheriff, de- 
scending the flight of steps, with a well-directed blow 
of a sharp hatchet, severed the rope that held up the 
trap-door, which instantly sank sheer beneath him, and 
he fell about three feet. And the man of strong and 
bloody hand, of fierce passions, of iron will, of wonder- 
ful vicissitudes, — the terrible partisan of Kansas — the 
capturer of the United States Arsenal at Harper's 
Ferry — the would-be Catiline of the South — the demi- 
god of the Abolitionists — the man execrated and lauded 
— damned and prayed for — the man who in his mo- 



114 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

tives, his means, his plans, and his successes must ever 
be a wonder, a puzzle, and a mystery — John Brown 
was hanging between heaven and earth. 

There was profoundest stillness during the time his 
struggles continued, growing feebler and feebler at each 
abortive attempt to breathe. His knees were scarcely 
bent, his arms were drawn up to a right angle at the 
elbow, with the hands clinched ; but there was no writh- 
ing of the body, no violent heaving of the chest. At 
each feebler effort at respiration, the arms sank lower, 
and his legs hung more relaxed, until at last, straight 
and lank he dangled, swayed slightly to and fro by the 
wind. 

It was a moment of deep solemnity, and suggestive 
of thoughts that make the bosom swell. The field of 
execution was a rising ground that commanded the out- 
stretching valley from mountain to mountain, and their 
still grandeur gave sublimity to the outline, while it 
so chanced that white clouds resting upon them gave 
them the appearance that reminded more than one of 
us of the snow peaks of the Alps. Before us was the 
greatest array of disciplined forces ever seen in Vir- 
ginia, infantry, cavalry, and artillery combined, com- 
posed of the old Commonwealth's choicest sons, and 
commanded by her best officers, and the great canopy 
of the sky, overarching all, came to add its sublimity 
— ever present, but only realized when great things 
are occurring beneath it. 

But the moral of the scene was the great point. A 
sovereign State had been assailed, and she had uttered 
but a hint, and her sons had hastened to show that they 
were ready to defend her. Law had been violated by 
actual murder and attempted treason, and that gibbet 
was erected by Law, and to uphold Law was this mili- 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 115 

tary force assembled. But greater still, God's holy- 
law and righteous will was vindicated. " Thou shalt 
not kill.-' " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall 
his blood be shed." And here the gray-haired man of 
violence meets his fate, after he has seen his two sons 
cut down before him earlier in the same career of vio- 
lence into which he had introduced them. So perish 
all such enemies of Virginia ! all such enemies of the 
Union ! all such foes of the human race ! So I felt, 
and so I said, without a shade of animosity, as I turned 
to break the silence, to those around me. Yet the mys- 
tery was awful — to see the human form thus treated 
by men — to see life suddenly stopped in its current, 
and to ask one's self the question without answer, " And 
what then ? " 

In all that array there was not, I suppose, one throb 
of sympathy for the offender. All felt in the depths of 
their hearts that it was right. On the other hand there 
was not one word of exultation or insult. From the be- 
ginning to the end, all was marked by the most absolute 
decorum and solemnity. There was no military music, 
no saluting of troops as they passed one another, nor 
anything done for show. The criminal hung upon the 
gallows for nearly forty minutes, and after being ex- 
amined by a whole staff of surgeons, was deposited in 
a neat coffin, to be delivered to his friends, and trans- 
ported to Harper's Ferry, where his wife awaited it. 
She came in company with two persons to see her hus- 
band last night, and returned to Harper's Ferry this 
morning. She is described by those who saw her as 
a very large masculine woman, of absolute composure 
of manner. The officers who witnessed their meeting 
in the jail, said they met as if nothing unusual had 
taken place, and had 'a comfortable supper together. 



116 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Brown would not have the assistance of any minister 
in the jail, during his last days, nor their presence with 
him on the scaffold. In going from prison to the place 
of execution, he said very little, only assuring those who 
were with him that he had no fear, nor had he at any 
time of his life known what fear was. When he entered 
the gate of the enclosure, he expressed his admiration of 
the beauty of the surrounding country, and pointing to 
different residences, asked who were the owners of them. 

There was a very small crowd to witness the ex- 
ecution. Governor Wise and General Taliaferro both 
issued proclamations exhorting the citizens to remain at 
home and guard their property, and warning them of 
possible danger. The train on the Winchester railroad 
had been stopped from carrying passengers ; and even 
passengers on the Baltimore railroad were subjected to 
examination and detention. An arrangement was made 
to divide the expected crowd into recognized citizens 
and those not recognized ; to require the former to go 
to the right, and the latter to the left. Of the latter 
there was not a single one. It was told that last night 
there were not in Charlestown ten persons besides citi- 
zens and military. 

There is but one opinion as to the completeness of the 
Arrangements made on the occasion, and the absolute 
success with which they were carried out. I have said 
something of the striking effect of the pageant, as a 
pageant ; but the excellence of it is that everything was 
arranged solely with a view to efficiency, and not for the 
effect upon the eye. Had it been intended for a mere 
spectacle, it could not have been more imposing : had ac- 
tual need occurred, it was the best possible arrangement. 

You may be inclined to ask, Was all this necessary ? 
I have not time to enter upon that question now. Gov- 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 117 

ernor Wise thought it necessary, and he said he had 
reliable information. The responsibility of calling out 
the force rests with him. It only remained for those 
under him to dispose the force in the best manner. 
That this was done is unquestionable, and whatever 
credit is due for it may be fairly claimed by those who 
accomplished it. 

Another letter in this musty pile was written 
more than forty years ago, when the country was 
on the verge of civil war, but had not quite top- 
pled over the precipice. It bears no date of time 
or place, but its contents show it to have been 
from Richmond, in the spring of '61, just before 
Jackson was ordered to Harper's Ferry. 

Dear, precious Wife, — I got here very safely. As 
I anticipated, the colonel wanted to consult me with 
regard to matters connected with the Institute, and 
the organization of the military forces of the region 
round about. Colonel Smith is occupying here a very 
important and laborious position and is acquiring a very 
enviable reputation for the value of his services. The 
general idea of the movements is, I think, based upon 
the purpose of avoiding civil war, but to be prepared 
thoroughly for every emergency. Jackson, with the 
rank of colonel, goes to supersede General Harper at 
Harper's Ferry. It is most flattering to him. Say to 
his wife that it is the command of all others which he 
would most prefer. He is a noble fellow, and I rejoice 
in his success. . . . 

It is almost midnight, and I am writing in Governor 
Letcher's office. I will be at home in a few days. God 
bless you all. Your Husband. 



118 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Then follows the first letter from the seat of 
war, — the first of hundreds which lie before me, 
like the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by that ter- 
rible tide of war. Only a half dozen or so can 
have place here. 

Harper's Ferry, May 12 (1861). 

Precious Wife, — As far as I know, I am in for the 
war, and cannot say when I will see you again. It 
would surprise you to see with what flexibility I adapt 
myself to my new circumstances. I did not know before 
how well I could get through work which is new to me, 
nor did I know how much technical acquaintance with 
military matters I had absorbed (for I never paid the 
least attention to them) by my life-long connection with 
the Institute. At all events, I have been for a week, 
since Massie's absence, acting as chief aid, settling all 
manner of questions for colonels, majors, and captains, 
and sometimes when Jackson was absent looking after 
his fortifications, acting as commander-in-chief. (Don't 
repeat such things to anybody.) We have regular and 
earnest war, in all but the battle, that has not come yet. 
The preparatory arrangements for war are more difficult 
and responsible than the battle itself, and the indirect 
evils are more to be deplored than the positive loss 
of life. Don't I long for my dear wife and children ? 
Indeed I do. Tell George I have got my big sword 
sharpened up now, and ride a nice horse. ... I have 
not heard a single word from you, but I know you do 
not forget to think of and pray for me. God bless 
us all. Your Husband. 

The second war letter is a fragment. It is also 
from Harper's Ferry, a week later in date than 
the first. 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 119 

Division Headquarters, 
Harper's Ferry, May 9, 1861. 

Do you think I have forgotten my little wife ? I 
would write to you daily, if I had time and postage 
stamps. These latter relics and mementos of things 
gone by are not to be had, though much sought for in 
all the camp. Strange ! that we should feel the want 
of stamps when we have declared that we have no need 
of the government that issued them ! I had a stock of 
them in my trunk, but my trunk is in Staunton. 

But the want of stamps is nothing to the want of time. 
Massie has gone to Richmond with dispatches ; Jackson 
said that I ought to go, but I interceded for Massie, that 
he might have a few days off duty. While he is gone, 
I take as much of Jackson's responsibility as I choose. 
Colonels, captains, and officials of all ranks come to me 
for orders, for leave of absence, for directions, for priv- 
ileges, for information. It is precisely, so far as I am 
concerned, like the superintend ency of the Institute, and 
it is my practice in that sort of work that gives me here 
more efficiency than men of more ability and more ex- 
perience. It is astonishing to see how the Institute tells 
just now. Every man from the oldest to the youngest, 
who has been connected with it, is looked to for extra 
service. When Massie is here I do some of the same 
sort of thing, but mainly I write letters for Jackson, and 
advise with him as far as I am able. Don't read this 
letter out of the family, or it would sound egotistic. Of 
course this takes up my time from morning till night, and 
sometimes from night almost till morning. I am writ- 
ing now, in the morning, while everybody but the sen- 
tinels and the servants are still in bed. But it is worth 
while to rise early to see the sunrise here. Busy as 
I am, I stop the curtent of other thoughts often during 



120 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

the day, especially at morning and evening, to take a 
hasty, deep draught of the exceeding beauty around me. 
I have been with Jackson reconnoitering on the three 
positions of command, the Virginia Heights, the Mary- 
land Heights, and the ridge behind the little town of 
Bolivar. We were examining with an eye to defense, 
but my eye will gaze on beauty wherever it is to be seen. 
Here beauty is in rich fresco on all the walls of our en- 
ceinture. One thought often occurs — [The rest of the 
letter is lost, and we will never know what that thought 
was that often occurred to the soldier-professor ! ] 

Soon after the date of this last letter, Colonel 
Preston received the commission of Lieutenant- 
Colonel in the Confederate army, and was sent 
with General F. H. Smith to Craney Island. This 
was considered an important post in the defense 
of Norfolk and the approach to Kichmond; but 
as it turned out, there was no active service at 
Craney Island, and the continuous stream of beau- 
tiful letters that passed between this poetic pair 
during the long summer of comparative idleness 
on the part of the soldier husband cannot show 
any excuse of "general interest" which would 
make it admissible to publish them here. One 
feels almost like a vandal in committing to the 
flames so much poetry and romance, so much 
merry wit and sparkle of gay words, so much 
sweet philosophy and heartfelt piety; but these 
things are inextricably interwoven with the love- 
making that should be, and must be held sacred. 
So there they lie, in ashes, on my hearth ! while 
I glean for my pages only a handful which have 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 121 

some interest as depicting the war, stripping even 
those of whatever I know the dead lovers would 
themselves have withheld. 

In the fall of '61, General Jackson asked Colo- 
nel Preston to accept the post of Adjutant-Gen- 
eral on his staff, and we find the following letters 
dated from the Valley General's headquarters: — 

Winchester, Dec. 1st, 1861. 
Sunday Night. 

Dear Wife, — I have been to church twice to-day, 
the General and I, so you see business has been slack ; 
though we started a section of artillery this morning, 
and made arrangements for receiving a regiment of 
militia, sent out to arrest a suspected man, released a 
number of prisoners from the guard-house, and received 
and attended to several couriers with dispatches. But 
papers that could stand until another day, we laid over, 
and so went to church, as I have, said, once in the morn- 
ing, and once at night. We heard a most excellent 
Gospel sermon, preached with sincerity and fervor, 
from Mr. Graham of the Old School ; and have just re- 
turned from hearing an elaborate effort by Dr. S. of 
the New School. The N. S. have preserved their dis- 
tinctive revival type, characterizing their preaching, and 
especially their prayers, in a way not agreeable to me. 
Dr. S. is counted very able, and he is in fact striking, 
but I did not relish his discourse, which was one of his 
noted ones, preached by request ; subject, the last Judg- 
ment. I was not profited. The house was crowded 
to suffocation, and the air was impure, so I fell into 
a drowsy intellectual inanition that was painful. We 
went at half past six, and got back at half past nine, so 
you see I suffered a good deal. By the way, since I have 



122 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

been here, I have been troubled with drowsiness that 
I never felt at Craney Island. Surely it was a blessed 
isle ! I feel as if I had been laid up in lavender there 
all summer. Perfume is scarce in this service, I assure 
you. A crane would hold up his neck high, and step 
along in dainty disgust at our doings here. And yet 
we are in clover at Headquarters. 

If the services of church did not profit me much, the 
singing charmed me. Nothing makes me realize home 
more than sweet female voices at church. Tell Betty I 
thought often of her. . . . Winter quarters will hardly 
come during my stay. We will not give up the expec- 
tation, at least, of active service, as soon as that. 

Headquarters, "Vali^y District, 
Winchester, Dec. 5th, 1861. 

(This is the regular heading to all documents that we 
send out.) 

Two letter in one day ! This is getting worse instead 
of better. I do not think that while I was a crane, 
musing, crabbing, and spreading the pinions of fancy, I 
ever perpetrated more than one epistle in 24 hours. 
. . . But now that Jim Lewis is going home on fur- 
lough, I cannot refrain from scribbling again. White 
people here have no chance of getting a furlough ; it is 
only our colored friends who can escape for a time 
the evils of war. I had but time to gobble up your 
letter this morning before I wrote, but to-night I have 
enjoyed it as an epicure ought to eat and be thankful 
for a dainty. Speaking of dainties, we had for supper 
to-night two pheasants and some partridges ; that will 
do pretty well, I should say ! In fact we live very 
well. Our mess is : the General and myself ; Alfred 
Jackson, Sandy Pendleton, and George Junkin ; very 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 123 

smart fellows all of them (Sandy most uncommonly 
so), and as nice as can be, and full of gayety. We 
have a merry table ; I as much a boy as any of them, 
and Jackson grave as a signpost, till something chances 
to overcome him, and then he breaks out into a laugh 
so awkward that it is manifest he has never laughed 
enough to learn how. He is a most simple-hearted man. 
He said to me the other day, " Do you know that the 
thing which has most interested and pleased me to-day, 
is to learn by a letter from Mr. Samuel Campbell that 
my lot is well set in grass." This would make Clark 
laugh, that any one should think so much of such a 
rocky bit of land ! Don't repeat this ; it would seem as 
if I were laughing at the General. Jackson said to me 
last night, that he would much rather be at the Insti- 
tute than in the army, and seemed to think fortunate 
those of us who are to go back. I sleep in the same 
room with the young men. Jackson invited me to share 
his room, . . . but I know that privacy would be more 
agreeable to him. Besides, I have a notion that he 
goes to his room many times a day for special prayer. 
As to myself, you know anything will do for me and 
. . . any place to sleep will answer very well. I sleep 
on what they call a stretcher, a military cot, with my 
overcoat and cape under my head for a pillow. I sleep 
soundly and get up early. . . . Well, I have written 
you an objective letter, and I enclose you a sort of diary 
that I keep on my business table, to help my indifferent 
memory. I do so many and such various things that 
I jot them down to prevent my forgetting. This is the 
diary of one day, and gives you a sample of my occu- 
pations ; you must allow that it would take up a good 
deal of time to fill up these outlines ! Hardly room 
left to say — I love you ! 

Your Husband. 



124 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

The next letter is more sentimental than war- 
like, but may be admitted as giving a picture of 
the writer's great captain putting aside his press- 
ing duties, as far as possible, in order to attend 
church, and then going with a member of his mili- 
tary family for a quiet hour of meditation among 
the silent homes of the dead. 

Winchester, 
Sunday Night, Dec. 8th, 1861. 

Dear Wife, — I feel a little sadness to-night. I ex- 
pected a letter from you and it did not come. I was 
disturbed in my sleep last night, and am heavy. Frank's 
company went out on an expedition two days ago, and 
I have not heard the result. 

After church this morning, the General and I walked 
to the cemetery of the town, and spent some time among 
the chambers of the Silent House, where grief that is 
tranquil now perhaps, has made enduring in marble its 
first fervor of anguish. " Lovely and Beloved Daugh- 
ter — Just Eighteen ! " That was an arrow through 
two hearts, but if they truly loved one another, as the 
wound closed, the two hearts were knit the closer in the 
healing. 

A son cut off in his promise : a mother erects the 
stone ; perhaps she sorrows for him yet. A broken 
column : I looked, and the husband was forty-nine years 
old ; the broken column shows that the wife thought that 
he was still young, and that the abrupt end of Ms ca- 
reer was untimely. . . . Many men seem to have died 
between fifty and sixty, and many women between forty 
and fifty. We will apply our hearts to wisdom, dear 
wife. One pair had lived beyond sixty, and died — 
the husband in January, the wife in February ; that 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 125 

was sweet, was it not ? I seldom meet with epitaphs 
that strike me, but I enclose one that I copied from the 
stone over the grave of a young wife. I think you will 
join with me in thinking it a sweet piece of dying joy- 
ousness ; a little too tripping, perhaps, to be unexcep- 
tionable, but with such a holy gladsomeness that it dis- 
arms criticism. . . . Dear Wife, let us kneel down and 
thank God for his goodness to his unworthy servants, 
and pray for Jesus' sake that he would keep us and 
ours, and save us all at last. 

Your Husband. 

P. S. General Richard Garnett has been assigned as 
brigadier of the Stonewall Brigade. He is a son of 
Colonel Garnett, and I should say a good soldier and a 
pleasant man. It was my office to take him out and 
introduce him to the brigade which is encamped five 
miles from town. Nevertheless the brigade ought to 
be commanded by one of its own colonels ; they have 
made their own glory, and a stranger should not have 
been made to share it. Colonel Taliaferro reported 
to-day with four regiments from the command on the 
Monterey (?) line. 

Here is the epitaph referred to in the letter : — 

" Plant ye a rose that may bloom o'er my bed, 
When I am gone — when I am gone ! 
Breathe out a sigh o'er the blest early dead, 
When I am gone — when I am gone ! 
Praise ye the Lord that I *m freed from all care, 
Serve ye the Lord, that my bliss ye may share, 
Look up on high, and believe I am there, 
When I am gone — when I am gone ! " 

The young soldier commended by General Jack- 
son in the following letter from Colonel Preston 



126 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

was from one of the poorest and plainest families 
in Lexington. 

Monday Night, December 23d, 1861. 

Your dear letter came just in the midst of the busi- 
ness mail, and it had to lie unopened for an hour or so. 
It looked pretty and piteous, like a young maiden asking 
to be kissed. How often I looked at it and longed for 
it! How I hurried the business along — and how I 
swallowed its sweetness when I broke it open ! Would 
that I may be able to wield my sword when in battle, 
as you wield your pen ! Have you ever thought of the 
conquests you have made by your pen ? . . . The many 
verses you have written have given you the easy palm 
among your sex, wherever you have been. It makes 
Phebe acknowledge you as her superior, and Elizabeth 
and the boys look up to you as a wonder. And Sister 
— with what delight I see her tender admiration for 
you ! . . . But better than all — is it not — wife of my 
heart? your husband finds a perpetual feast in the 
refined, intellectual culture his nature fits him to appre- 
ciate and enjoy. 

It made me sorry to think of your disappointment in 
not getting any letters last week ; and your next letter 
will sing the same wail of Philomela. But before this 
time, you will have received my few lines of Saturday, 
and to-morrow you will get my Sunday letter, and so 
the love stream runs free again, with its babbling 
through the flowery green sward. If I get my leave 
from the Board of Visitors to remain two or three 
weeks after the first of January, I will write you letters 
enough to make up for all you have missed. I wonder 
how many letters I have sent you since last July ? I 
am sure I have no idea. And then my profuse journal- 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 127 

izing was for you. ... I wish you would go and see 
old Mrs. P. Tell her that General Jackson was very 
much moved when he heard that her son was killed, and 
said that there was no better soldier in the army. I 
walked through the woods at midnight, that I might see 
his face for the last time, and as they raised the cover- 
ing, that I might look upon him, I said to those around, 
" I knew him from a boy ; he was a good soldier, and 
what is better, a good Christian. He served his country 
and his God, and has gone where war is no more." It 
will comfort her. And you may need some one to com- 
fort you soon. God keep us all. 

Your Husband. 
P. S. Tuesday morning. Bitter cold. I am to start 
for Richmond to-night. 

It does not appear in the next letter what was 
the nature of the commission on which General 
Jackson had sent the writer to Richmond; but 
readers of Stonewall Jackson's life will remember 
that this was the crisis in his military history, 
when the Confederate Government was inclined 
to criticise and hamper the rashness of Jackson's 
daring plans. A few months later there was no 
one in the Confederacy so ignorant as not to do 
honor to the rashness now known to be genius. 

Governor Letcher's Office, 
Friday, Dee. 27th. 

Dear Maggie, — I expect to leave to-morrow for 
Winchester. I have got through my business, and 
must hurry back to save Sunday travel. Jackson sent 
me down on a forlorn hope, and I have nothing to 
blame myself for, that I did not accomplish what could 



128 MARGARET JUNKIN. PRESTON 

not be done. I am sure that I did all that mortal man 
could do in the premises. The Secretary of War re- 
ceived me very kindly, and so did President Davis. 
The latter said, when I was introduced to him, that he 
had expected to see a Colonel Preston that he had met 
before, but, said he, so many of your name have entered 
the service, that it is no wonder I was mistaken. So 
much for your name, Mrs. Preston ! 

Well, I can't come home at New Year. I got leave 
of absence from the Secretary of War [from service at 
the V. M. I.], and will remain with Jackson if he makes 
the movement he contemplates. If he should be obliged 
to go into winter quarters, I will hurry home. You 
believe me, dearest, this does not answer the demands of 
my heart. There is nothing in any mode of life that 
compensates me for the loss of your society and the 
delights of home. But I am glad to believe that my 
services are of value to my country in this her hour of 
need, and if in the Providence of God, my life is to be 
laid upon her altar, most freely the offering shall be 
made. 

But I know what I am best suited for ; it is to make 
your happiness in securing mine. I claim not to be 
equal to many men for military talents — I find and 
acknowledge many superiors in business, in oratory, in 
scholarship and in many other things, but that man 
who knows better than I do how to appreciate and 
return the love of a noble woman, I never expect to 
see ! . . . But you would not love me if I could forget 
duty. 

I am writing this in the governor's office, so sur- 
rounded with men in whose conversation I am com- 
pelled to take part, that I cannot fix my thoughts long 
enough to say many things that I proposed. . . . 

Your Husband. 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 129 

Two letters from Stonewall Jackson may piece 
out this year of the journal's silence; their very 
trivialities being of interest to us, as showing the 
great soldier's thoughts occupied with the comfort 
of his servants, the condition of his little farm, 
and the family affairs of his friends at the very 
time that he was planning campaigns and winning 
brilliant victories that have made his name famous 
all over the world. 

Centreville, Oct. 23d, 1861. 

My dear Maggie, — I am much obliged for your kind 
letter of the 19th, and for the arrangement respecting 
Amy and Emma [slaves owned by Jackson]. Please 
have the kindness to go to Winny Buck's occasionally, 
and see that Amy is well cared for, and that not only 
she, but also Emma, is well clothed. I am under special 
obligations for the religious instruction that you have 
given Amy, and hope that it may be in your power to 
continue it. Remember me to her very kindly, on the 
first opportunity, and say that I hope she has rich 
heavenly consolation. This evening I expect our own 
pastor and Dr. McFarland. I will send some money 
by Dr. White for you to use as occasion may require for 
Amy and Emma, and I will so manage as to keep a 
supply in the Rockbridge Bank, or elsewhere, subject 
to your order. 

I have this day received a letter from your dear 
husband at Craney Island. The letter has reference to 
his coming here, and I am anxiously expecting him, 
though am apprehensive that he will not reach here for 
a week or so yet. 

I heard from A. a few days since ; she was at her 



130 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

father's, and doing well. Give my kindest regards to 
Mrs. Cocke. 

My oft-repeated prayer is for a speedy termination of 
the war, by an honorable and lasting peace. God has 
given us another glorious victory near Leesburg. 

My prayer for you is that your path may be that of 
the just, which shineth more and more unto the perfect 
day. Who would not be a Christian ! 

Your affectionate friend, 

T. J. Jackson. 
Winchester, Va., Nov. 16th, 1861. 

My dear Maggie, — More than once your kind and 
touching letter respecting the sainted Amy brought 
tears to my eyes. For several months before leaving 
home, I was impressed with her great devotion to the 
cause of our beloved Redeemer. She was evidently 
ripening rapidly for a better world, where I hope that 
we, and the ransomed of the Lord, may be privileged 
to join her. 

I am very grateful to you for your Christian kind- 
ness to her. If the money I sent by Dr. White is not 
enough to meet the little demands connected with her 
funeral, please let me know how much more is required, 
and I will promptly attend to having it forwarded. I 
am much gratified to know that you gave her a decent 
burial, and that so many followed her remains to the 
grave. Though such numbers cannot affect the dead, 
yet such demonstrations of regard are gratifying to the 
living. 

Remember me very kindly to Mrs. Cocke, and the 
different members of your family. I sent your letter 
to A. Your dear husband has gone to Richmond for a 
few days. I received a letter from him since he left, in 
which he expressed the desire of spending one day with 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 131 

you, but his services are so valuable to me that I regret 
to say he cannot be spared. 

Very affectionately yours, 

T. J. Jackson. 



By these letters the biographer has sought to 
introduce the great events which crowded Mrs. 
Preston's mind and heart for the next four years, 
though nothing can make up to the reader for 
what he has missed in having no picture from the 
diary itself of that first year of the war. 

For the winter of 1860-61 — as this writer 
recalls those days of forty years ago, seen then 
from the standpoint of a child twelve years old 
— was full of tumult in Lexington. Almost 
without exception the older and more influential 
citizens of the town, and indeed of the whole 
Valley of Virginia, were earnest in their desire 
to keep peace and preserve the Union. But the 
young men were beginning to stir with the excite- 
ment of coming changes. The presence in the 
Virginia Military Institute and at Washington 
College of students from the seceded States kept 
up red-hot discussions ; and in youthful society 
these " Rebels," as we then called them, wearing 
their blue secession badges, uttering proud senti- 
ments of independence and valorous resolves to 
die rather than suffer coercion, were secretly the 
objects of intense interest and admiration among 
us young folks. 

Mrs. Preston's feelings were torn that winter 
by a difference of opinion between her father and 



132 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

husband. Major Preston was loyal to the govern- 
ment, but held that he owed allegiance first to his 
sovereign State, Virginia; and with calm resolu- 
tion announced his intention of abiding by Vir- 
ginia's choice, whether it was for the Union, which 
he desired, or for secession, which he deplored. 
When Virginia did secede, Major Preston heartily 
agreed with her legislators that she had been forced 
to the act by President Lincoln's call for troops. 
If he had considered secession unwise, he yet held 
that coercion was tyranny; and while he never 
ceased to deplore the war, he was convinced that 
Virginia's part in it was the only part that con- 
sisted with honor and true loyalty. 

As the winter drew to a close Mrs. Preston was 
pained by the surging of these angry waves of dis- 
cussion into her own home ; and when war was 
finally declared, and her father and sister broke 
up their home in Lexington and went back to the 
North, her heart was sore indeed. But she un- 
hesitatingly adopted her husband's views, and his 
people became her people. His influence over her 
was made the more sure by his reasonable calm- 
ness and entire lack of bitterness toward the North. 
No one ever heard a harsh utterance on this sub- 
ject from his lips. Angry he often was at outrages 
committed during the war, and especially at the 
indignities suffered in Reconstruction days ; but 
while some ministers of the Gospel and good peo- 
ple on both sides of the line allowed themselves to 
revile their enemies, Major — now Colonel — Pres- 
ton followed the noble example of Lee and Jackson, 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 133 

of Lincoln and Grant, in giving the enemy credit 
for honesty of purpose, and for patriotism as they 
interpreted it. \ 

With this preface, Mrs. Preston's journal may 
be allowed to take up the story of her life. It is not 
the journal of one who writes with a distant public 
in her eye. Records of weather, of health and ill 
health in her family and among her neighbors, 
garden and farm matters, and many other things 
whose interest has evaporated with time, must be 
cut out of her pages. But when this is done, there 
still remains more than this volume can find place 
for, of matters interesting to the readers of her 
biography. 

At the time of the first entry in the journal, 
April, 1862, Mrs. Preston's husband and his two 
eldest sons had been in the army for almost twelve 
months. Colonel Preston, however, who was more 
than ten years over conscript age, had been re- 
called to the Military Institute, which was full of 
boys preparing for active service, and this kept 
him for a time at home. " Stonewall " Jackson, 
Mrs. Preston's intimate friend and kinsman, was in 
command of operations in the Valley of Virginia ; 
her brother, the Rev. W. F. Junkin, was a captain 
of infantry; her uncle's son (afterwards Judge 
George Junkin, of Christiansburg, Va.) was also 
in the Confederate army. All except the old men of 
the town of Lexington were in the army ; no boy 
over seventeen could be restrained ; our world was 
a world of femininity with a thin line of boys and 
octogenarians. But the journal speaks for itself : 



134 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

April 3d, 1862 : I regret now that I did not, a year 
ago, make brief notes of what was passing under my 
eye. Not write a journal, — I have no time nor incli- 
nation for that, — but just such slight jottings as might 
serve to recall the incidents of this most eventful year 
in our country's history. It is too late now to attempt 
the review. While the year has not brought the sorrow 
and trial to me, which it has to such multitudes of 
hearts, it still has had in it much of trouble and perplex- 
ity. The sudden breaking up of my Father's family — 
his and Sister Julia's departure to Philadelphia — my 
husband's long absence in the army — my many cares 
incident upon this absence — my days and nights of tor- 
turing apprehension while he was campaigning with 
General Jackson — my entire ignorance of all that ap- 
pertained to my Father, Sister, and most of my friends 
— these were the troubles that made my year sorrowful. 
Thanks to God's mercy, I got through all somehow, and 
was blest by having my husband restored to me by Feb- 
ruary 1st. 

Darkness seems gathering over the Southern land; 
disaster follows disaster ; where is it all to end ? My very 
soul is sick of carnage. I loathe the word — War. It 
is destroying and paralyzing all before it. Our schools 
are closed — all the able-bodied men gone — stores shut 
up, or only here and there one open ; goods not to be 
bought, or so exorbitant that we are obliged to do with- 
out. I actually dressed my baby all winter in calico 
dresses made out of the lining of an old dressing-gown ; 
and G. in clothes concocted out of old castaways. As to 
myself, I rigidly abstained from getting a single article 
of dress in the entire past year, except shoes and stock- 
ings. Calico is not to be had ; a few pieces had been 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 135 

offered at 40 cents per yard. Coarse, unbleached cot- 
tons are very occasionally to be met with, and are caught 
up eagerly at 40 cents per yard. Such material as we 
used to give ninepence for (common blue twill) is a 
bargain now at 40 cents, and then of a very inferior 
quality. Soda, if to be had at all, is 75 cents per lb. 
Coffee is not to be bought. We have some on hand, and 
for eight months have drunk a poor mixture, half wheat, 
half coffee. Many persons have nothing but wheat or 
rye. 

These are some of the very trifling effects of this 
horrid and senseless war. Just now I am bound down 
under the apprehension of having my husband again 
enter the service ; and if he goes, he says he will not 
return until the war closes, if indeed he come back alive. 
May God's providence interpose to prevent his going ! 
His presence is surely needed at home ; his hands are 
taken away by the militia draught, and he has almost 
despaired of having his farms cultivated this year. His 
overseer is draughted, and will have to go, unless the 
plea of sickness will avail to release him, as he has been 
seriously unwell. The Institute is full, two hundred 
and fifty cadets being in it ; but they may disperse at 
any time, so uncertain is the tenure of everything now. 
The College has five students ; boys too young to enter 
the army. 

April 10th : Ground white with snow ; no mails still : 
Mr. P. consents to postpone his going to the army, till 
there is a more decided change in George (an ill child). 
How this unnatural war affects everything ! Mr. P. 
asks me for some old pants of Willy's or Randolph's, 
for a boy at the farm. I tell him that on them I am 
relying wholly to clothe John and George this summer. 



136 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

For months we have had no service at night in any 
church in town, owing to the scarcity of candles, or 
rather to save lights and fuel. Common brown sugar, 
too dark to use in coffee, sells here now for 25 cents 
per lb. Salt is 50 cents per quart in Eichmond. I 
jot down things like these, to show how the war is 
affecting us. A bit of silver is never seen. We are 
afraid of all sorts of notes. Mr. P. is trying to put 
what means he has left, from the wreck of his handsome 
fortune, in land, as the only safe investment ; he bought 
a farm (which he does not want, and does n't know 
how to get cultivated) the other day from Dr. Leyburn, 
so as to have something tangible for his money. While 
watching beside my child, I have managed to read, 
" Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India," a most 
interesting book. What a brave, noble fellow Hodson 
was ! But in its best, most exciting aspects, how unat- 
tractive (to me at least) is a soldier's life ! 

I think continually of Father and Julia, and long to 
hear from them. Thank God they are not suffering 
the apprehension — the undefined fear — the constant 
dread — which I am never free from. We hesitate 
about engaging in anything. Is it worth while to have 
garden made ? We may be flying before an advancing 
Federal army before many weeks. Mrs. Cocke writes 
imploring us to come down to Oakland, bag and bag- 
gage ; but to fly (in case of the occupation of the 
Valley) would be to give up everything to certain 
destruction. The disposition of people here seems to be 

— very universally, to hold on to their homes. I shall 
do so, unless Mr. P. constrains me to go away. 

One thing surprises me very much in the progress of 
this war ; and I think it is a matter of general surprise 

— the entire quietness and subordination of the negroes. 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 137 

We have slept all winter with the doors of our house, 
outside and inside, all unlocked ; indeed the back door 
has not even a hasp on it, and stands open. I have 
shut it frequently at midnight (when accident called 
me down stairs), to keep the dogs out ; and some $600 
worth of silver, most of it in an unlocked closet, is in 
the dining room. Would I get my Northern friends to 
believe this ? It is more remarkable, this quietness and 
sense of security, because there are no men left in the 
town, except the old men and boys. I note this thing, 
by the way, as an unexpected phase of these war times. 
There is not, and never has been, a particle of fear of 
anything like insurrectionary movements. I am sure 1 
have none. 

April 14:th : For two or three days George has been 
improving, but he is still too weak to sit up. His 
Father, however, considered it safe to leave home this 
morning for Jackson's camp, near Mt. Jackson, a day's 
ride beyond Staunton. Whether he will return to the 
service remains to be seen. I do not conceive that the 
indications of Providence point him to go, and I have 
perhaps gone beyond a wife's privilege in my strenuous 
use of arguments to induce him to think so too. Oh ! if 
we might only be permitted to withdraw ourselves from 
this turmoil of horrid strife — if it were only to a log 
cabin on some mountain side ! But I mean to indulge 
in no moaning in these bald pages ; nor to write down 
any opinions ; merely to essay a very brief record of 
such facts as I am personally concerned with, for future 
reference. 

April 22d : I dare to feel something like happiness 
today. Last night Mr. P. returned, to my inexpres- 
sible relief and joy.* Thank God for this mercy ! The 



138 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Inspector-generalship was a post which did not suit Mr. 
Preston at all, so he has declined it, and for the present 
accepts no place with Jackson. He brings word that 
Jackson is making a stand 20 miles east of Harrison- 
burg, at Swift-Run Gap. Mr. P. was in a little artillery- 
skirmish while with the army, and after learning from 
Jackson that he did not anticipate any battle speedily, 
left him. Afterwards, hearing that the U. S. troops 
were advancing, and that there was a possibility of an 
engagement, he turned back, offered his services as a 
volunteer aid, and determined to remain until the fight 
was over. It soon became clear, however, that no fight 
was to come off just now, according to Jackson's opinion ; 
perhaps no general engagement at all. So Mr. P. turned 
his face homeward again. I will try not to darken my 
present relief, by the thought that he may soon have to 
be separated from me, and I not be able to hear from 
him, or hold any communication with him ; for Fremont 
and Rosencrantz are both west of us, each about 30 
or 40 miles, and may advance against Lexington at 
any time. 

May 1st : A dreary dismal day of rain, and my 
feelings are in accordance with the weather. At mid- 
night last night Mr. P. was summoned to the Institute 
by a dispatch received from Jackson, requiring the corps 
of cadets to march at once to his support in an expected 
battle. Before three o'clock he returned, saying he too 
was to go early in the morning. Although something 
of the kind has been continually dreaded, it was a shock 
to me — and such a grief ! He is gone — to be exposed 
certainly to the chances of a stern battle ; there is no 
mail communication between Jackson's position and 
this, so I can't hear from him, and must be content 
with rumors, which are torturing, because generally so 
exaggerated. 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 139 

After he left me, I shut myself in his study, and 
blotted the leaves of his Bible with my tears, while I 
read on my knees the 91st Psalm, and besought God to 
realize to him all the promises contained in that Psalm. 
Then, with my finger on the Saviour's promise, " Ask 
and it shall be given you," etc., I plead his fulfilment of 
it to me in my precious husband's behalf ; and I think 
I felt a relief in laying my aching heart on the bosom 
of the Redeemer. " Be not afraid, only believe ! God 
has been so good to us in the past, let us trust him for 
the future " — my Beloved said to me as he held me in 
his arms at parting. With God's help I will try and act 
upon his counsel. Am I not limiting my heavenly 
Father's power when I feel that my husband is less 
safe on the battle field than at home ? Wherever he is, 
the Almighty arms are around him ; this being so, why 
should I be afraid ? " Why art thou so fearful, oh, thou 
of little faith ! " 

May 10th : Oh ! this heart-crushing suspense ! No 
news from the scene of battle, except the report that 
Major Ross is among the killed. Thursday, the day of 
the battle at Buffalo Gap, cannonading was distinctly 
heard here ; our servants noticed it and spoke of it 
during the day. Today, they insist that they heard it 
distinctly again. Oh ! my husband ! Could I but know 
he was safe ! I wonder at myself that I do not loose 
my senses. My God! help me to stay my heart on 
thee! 

May 15th : Have had various notes from Mr. P. 
since Saturday. Was extremely relieved to find that 
he was not in the fight ; that there were only 50 killed 
and 250 wounded, instead of 300 killed, as first reported. 
It is not true that Major Ross was killed. The pursuit 



140 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

of the Federal forces has been kept up for several days. 
Tonight, a letter from Mr. P. says they halted on 
Monday, to rest the army half a day, and hear a 
sermon from Dr. Dabney, a thanksgiving for the vic- 
tory. This evening we hear the report that Jackson is 
retreating ■**- the Federal force having been reinforced 
with fresh troops. Mr. P. says a battle seems imminent ; 
he is not on Jackson's staff, but marching with the corps 
of cadets. News of the burning of the steam iron-clad 
ship, Merrimac. What a sacrifice ! But I record here 
nothing of public news, beyond what touches myself. 
It is not my purpose to do more. 

May VJth : With what different feelings do I make 
a record in this little note book today, from last Satur- 
day ! Last night my husband, almost without any warn- 
ing, (none, except that we heard Jackson had relieved 
the corps from farther duty, and they were soon to 
return), stepped in upon us just as tea was over. What 
a welcome we gave him! I do thank God for his 
mercy in having fulfilled my petitions, as I would fain 
hope, in restoring to me safe my precious husband. 
He was not in the battle at McDowell, though they 
marched 40 miles in one day in order to come up in 
time. The fight was just over, but he was left in charge 
of the battle field, helped to bury the dead, and saw the 
wounded borne off the field ; the Southerners lost some 
60 or 70 killed, and some 280 wounded ; about 340 he 
certainly thinks in all. What the Federal loss was he 
could not tell. The Confederates buried about 40 of 
them, and the country people around say that multitudes 
of wagon-loads of dead and wounded were carried away. 
As the Confederates pursued, they came upon many 
graves just filled up, but how many were in them of 
course they could not tell. It seemed awfully unfeeling 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 141 

to hear Mr. P. say that they took off the dead men's 
shoes before burying them, and in one instance a 
soldier applied to him for leave to wear them. He 
stopped one soldier who was cutting buttons off a dead 
Federal's coat. (Buttons are a scarce article in the 
Confederacy !) The corps of cadets could not get 
the permission of the Board of Visitors to continue in 
the service, or they would have gone on with Jackson's 
army, as he desired them to do. This accounts for 
their return. 

May 21th : As we rose from the dinner table today, 
I asked Mr. Preston if he was going to ride out to the 
farm this afternoon. " No," he said, " I will read a 
while, and then go down street and hear the news." He 
had scarcely done speaking, when he was summoned to 
the door, to " hear the news," the sad news, that in a 
fight just over, at Winchester, Frank Preston [the sec- 
ond son of the family] had been " severely wounded." 
In about two hours, the carriage was ready, and Mr. P. 
on his way to Staunton. Prof. Nelson went with him, 
as his brother-in-law is slightly wounded. How he will 
find poor Frank, God only knows : he said he would be 
thankful to find him alive, and seemed little disposed 
to be hopeful about him : he has an arm broken, and a 
ball in his side. Oh ! this horrid, unnatural war ! Had 
a letter today from W. F. J. — he says his time is ab- 
sorbed in trying to comfort the afflicted. Must write to 
the distressed G. family ; R. was brought home dead a 
few days ago. May God be gracious, and spare my 
husband the anguish of seeing his son cut off in the first 
flush of his opening manhood ! 

May 28th : This has been a day of painful suspense 
about poor Frank ; the mail brought us no letter ; but 



142 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

one was received by some one else, which says that 
Frank's arm (in the opinion of the surgeon who spoke 
to the writer) may probably have to be amputated. 

After Dark : Phil returned with the carriage ; Mr. 
P. went on to Winchester in an ambulance. Phil heard 
a gentleman say to him, just as he was stepping into 
the ambulance, that he was just from Winchester, and 
Frank was not so ill as he might expect to find him. 
This is some alleviation of the suspense. Heard today 
of a son of Dr. Breckenridge's being killed at Shiloh ; 
also, a cousin of Mr. P. being desperately wounded. 
Two dead soldiers passed through Lexington today. 
Last week eight dead bodies passed through. We are 
getting so used to these things, that they cease to excite 
any attention. Jackson has gained a great success, and 
the papers ring with eulogiums on "old Stonewall" as 
they delight to call him. We have heard today of five 
Lexington boys being wounded at Winchester ; Frank 
P. the only one seriously so. 

Miss Magdalen Reid tells me that in buying grocer- 
ies to begin housekeeping, she paid 45 cents for brown 
sugar, $1 per lb. for coffee, and $4.50 for tea ! The 
coarsest domestic cotton I ever saw — such as very few 
servants would be willing to wear, I can only get for 
75 cents per yard. Calico, when it can be had at all, is 
the same price. These records will be interesting for 
reference hereafter. 

May 30tfA : Today brought letters from the surgeon 
and others, in reference to poor Frank ; our worst fears 
about amputation realized ! the arm was taken off at the 
shoulder on Tuesday morning ; the elbow joint was too 
much injured, in the opinion of three surgeons, to make 
it safe to try to save it. Pray God his life may be 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 143 

spared! this is a sad misfortune, but if he only lives 
through it, what a mercy compared with what multitudes 
of others suffer ! The letters speak of Frank's great for- 
titude and composure, even under excessive pain ; indeed 
of his gallant bearing throughout the whole thing. 
What life-long trial and sorrow this dreadful war will 
impose upon thousands of families ! How long, Lord, 
how long, shall we thy guilty people who deserve all 
this fierce wrath, continue to suffer it ! 

June 3d : Yesterday, Bro. Wm., Anna, and the 
children came in ; W. was only here a short time. It 
was very sweet, however, to have even this little visit 
from some of my own kin. I feel so lonely and iso- 
lated. How I long often to fly to dear Father and Julia 
for a little while, have a good cry on their bosoms, and 
then fly back ! It is very sorrowful to be so utterly cut 
off from them. They are in my thoughts every day, 
and almost every hour. So are my brothers and their 
families. When I am compelled to hear scorn and 
loathing predicated of everything Northern (as must 
continually be the case), my heart boils up, and sobs to 
itself. But I must be silent. 

June Uh : No letter from Mr. P. today ; no mail 
from Winchester. ... Of three of the boys who used 
to live at my Father's, one is a cripple for life ; another 
is a prisoner of war ; a third lies in a nameless grave, if 
indeed he ever had burial ; and the most distinguished 
General — certainly the one about whom the whole 
Confederacy has the most enthusiasm, is our brother-in- 
law Jackson, the inmate for years of my Father's house. 
What strange upheavings and separations this direful 
war has made ! 
... By way of recording the straits to which war- 



144 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

times have reduced matters, let me note that today I 
made my George a jacket out of a worn out old gingham 
apron ! And pants out of an old coat, by piecing the 
sleeves together. For weeks I have been wearing a 
pair of slippers which I made myself. Anna's little 
children were all barefoot the other day, not because 
she would willingly have them so, but because shoes 
cannot be bought. 

June 6th : Had a letter from Mr. P. yesterday. He 
was at Harrisonburg, having been obliged to fly from 
Winchester on foot, sleeping on the bare ground : At 
Strausburg, 18 miles distant, he found an ambulance, 
in which he went to Harrisonburg. It was hard to 
leave poor Frank in his helpless condition, among 
strangers, and within Federal lines ; the Federal army 
expected to take possession Sunday morning, so that he 
is now a prisoner : and we will not know anything about 
him. His Father had only been with him a day and a 
half. But he was improving when he left him, and he 
had every attention from the kind family in whose 
house he was. Still he is utterly cut off from his 
friends, and if he should die we will not know it! 
These are some of the experiences of this war. 

June 2Ath : Rose before 5 o'clock this morning, and 
had a pleasant ride on horseback with my husband be- 
fore breakfast. It gave me back my earlier days for 
the time, to find myself cantering as of old over the 
hills. Rode a fine horse of Mr. Ruffner's of Harrison- 
burg, sent here to keep it from being seized by the Fed- 
erals. (Bro. Eben bought some indigo today, at $6.00 
per lb.) 

Mr. P. came home from the farm tonight, saying 
that everybody out there had heard distinct cannonad- 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 145 

ing during the day. I note it to see if it shall turn 
out that there has been fighting within any audible dis- 
tance today. 

July 1st : It turns out that the cannonading heard 
on Thursday was the beginning of the great battle at 
Richmond. All around, people who have acuter ears 
than I have hear it with wonderful distinctness. Every 
day since, the sound has been audible, especially when 
on a hill top. Mr. P. stood this morning (I was beside 
him) and counted the rounds. 

July 2d : . . . People think that the reason Jackson 
is so successful is because he prays so much. One of 
his staff told Mr. P. not long ago, that amid the strife 
of battle he had sometimes seen him for a moment with 
uplifted hands in the act of prayer. When Mr. P. was 
his Adjutant-General, he says Jackson was in the habit 
of withdrawing frequently during the day, when it was 
practicable, as Mr. P. believes, for prayer. 

July 9th : . . . Yesterday we began to narrow down 
our use of even " Confederate coffee " (half wheat or 
rye) to once a day — our sugar is getting so low, and 
we expect to get no more till the war is over. Sugar is 
rarely to be bought, and when a little is to be had it is 
$1.00 per lb. ! 

July 22d: Yesterday, while we sat at dinner, who 
should step into the dining room but Frank Preston ! 
Poor fellow ! it was a piteous thing to see him with but 
one arm ; but what a relief to see him again, and have 
him safe, when we were mourning him as perhaps ill and 
carried to Fort Delaware ! He looks right well, though 
he had to endure the pain of a second amputation, 
which was done by the Federal surgeons, from whom 



146 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

he says he received skilful treatment and true kindness. 
They would not parole him, so a lady who lives outside 
the pickets, about eight or ten miles from Winchester, 
came in .and took him to her house in her carriage, no 
one challenging them : there he remained two days ; 
when two other sick prisoners, whom she had sent her 
carriage for in the same way, were seized and taken 
back. As soon as this was known to her, she sent Frank 
on in her own carriage, immediately, twenty miles 
(after night), lest he too should be sent for: and so he 
escaped. He was confined to bed several weeks with 
his wound. Two or three hours before Frank came, 
Willy P. started to join his company, the Liberty Hall 
Volunteers ; so the brothers just missed each other. 

August 2d : . . . What straits war reduces us to ! I 
carried a lb. or so of sugar and coffee to Sister Agnes 
lest she should not have any, and she gave me a great 
treasure — a pound of soda I When it can be had, it 
is $1.2.5 per lb. 

August 23d: . . Willy Preston has been in a bat- 
tle (Cedar Run), and we hear behaved with remarkable 
gallantry — rallied a disorganized regiment, or rather 
parts of many companies, and with a lieutenant led 
them to the charge. 

Sept. 3d : . . . Yesterday asked the price of a calico 
dress ; " Fifteen dollars and sixty cents ! " Tea is $20. 
per lb. A merchant told me he gave $50. for a pound 
of sewing silk ! The other day our sister, Mrs. Cocke, 
purchased 5 gallons of whiskey, for which, by way of 
favor, she only paid $50. ! It is selling for $15. per 
gallon. Very coarse unbleached cotton (ten cent cot- 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 147 

ton) I was asked 75 cts. for yesterday. Eight dollars 
a pair for servants' coarse shoes. Mr. P. paid $11. for 
a pair for Willy. These prices will do to wonder over 
after a while. 

10 o'clock P. M. Little did I think, when I wrote 
the above, that such sorrow would overtake this family 
so soon ! News came this afternoon of the late fearful 
fight on Manassas Plains, and of Willy Preston being 
mortally wounded — in the opinion of the surgeons ! 
His Father was not at home, and did not hear the news 
for some time. Oh ! the anguish of the father-heart ! 
This evening he has gone to Staunton ; will travel all 
night in order to take the cars tomorrow morning. I 
am afraid to go to bed, lest I be roused by some mes- 
senger of evil tidings, or (terrible to dread) the possible 
arrival of the dear boy — dead ! Father in Heaven ! 
Be merciful to us, and spare us this bitterness ! 

Sept. 4dh : The worst has happened — our fearful 
suspense is over : Willy, the gentle, tender-hearted, 
brave boy, lies in a soldier's grave on the Plains of Ma- 
nassas ! This has been a day of weeping and of woe to 
this household. I did not know how I loved the dear 
boy. My heart is wrung with grief to think that his 
sweet face, his genial smile, his sympathetic heart are 
gone. My eyes ache with weeping. But what is the 
loss to me, compared to the loss to his Father, his sis- 
ters, his brothers ! Oh ! his precious stricken Father ! 
God support him to bear the blow ! The carriage has 
returned, bringing me a note from Mr. P. saying he had 
heard there was faint hope. Alas ! the beloved son has 
been five days in his grave. My poor husband ! Oh ! 
if he were only here, to groan out his anguish on my 
bosom. I can't write more. 

Sept. 6th : Our grief has sorrowed itself down to 



148 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

calmness ; but how sad the household ! Dear "Willy was 
the darling of all. His unselfish nature led him to be 
considerate to a most remarkable degree of every one's 
comfort. Never have I seen so devoted and thoughtful 
a son. His love and care for his father had a womanly 
tenderness in it. I have need to miss him ! He was 
ever gentle and kind to me, and loving to my children. 
A more faultless character I think I have never known. 
And then he was so consistent a Christian ; that is the 
crowning blessedness of all. When he was struck down 
on the battle field, friends gathered around him with 
expressions of sympathy (we are told), when he said, 
" Don't distress yourselves about me, I am not afraid 
to die." To the surgeon he said, " I am at peace with 
God and with all the world." My heart aches for his 
poor father ; he will stagger under the blow. His poor 
sisters are heart-wrung. Nothing could exceed his 
brotherly love to them. Alas ! what sorrow reigns over 
the land ! there is a universal wail of woe. Dr. White's 
family is stricken just as this one is. Hugh, their most 
cherished one, is killed, and today Professor White went 
with a hearse to try to recover his body. Henry Paine, 
the Dr.'s son, is killed ; Col. Baylor killed ; Major Pat- 
rick killed. It is like the death of the first born in 
Egypt. Who thinks of or cares for victory now ! 

Monday night, Sept. 8th : A note today from Mr. P. 
at Gordonsville, written Thursday evening ; not a word 
had he yet heard of dear Willy's death ; he would prob- 
ably hear nothing, until he reached the place and was 
shown his grave ! We are enduring the painful sus- 
pense of waiting for the coming home of his father with 
the sad remains ; it will be a torturing thing. He may 
come tonight. 

Sept. 11th : My husband has today returned without 



A JOURNAL OF WAR TIMES 149 

the dear remains of Willy. . . . "Slain in battle — 
Slain in battle " — he continually reiterates. . . . He 
could not know certainly which was Willy's grave ; had 
the one he supposed to be, opened ; alas ! for our poor 
humanity ! when he opened the blanket in which the 
body was wrapped, he could not distinguish a feature of 
his boy on the despoiled face — he tore open the shirt, 
and there where I had written it was W. C. Preston ! 
He thought to bring a lock of his hair, — it crumbled 
to the touch ! It was impossible to have him removed, 
so he carefully marked the spot, and left the removal to 
be accomplished another time. 

Such pictures of horror as Mr. P. gives ! Unnum- 
bered dead Federal soldiers covering the battle field ; 
one hundred in one gully, uncovered, and rotting in the 
sun ; they were strewn all along the roadside. And 
dead horses everywhere, by the hundred. Hospitals 
crowded to excess, and loathsome beyond expression in 
many instances. How fearful is war! I cannot put 
down the details he gave me, they are too horrid. 

On the occasion of the inauguration of the 
Stonewall Jackson Memorial Building, at the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute, Lexington, Va., June 23, 
1897, the late Dr. Hunter McGuire, Jackson's 
medical director, made a deeply interesting ad- 
dress on Jackson, as he had known him, during the 
four years' close companionship, as a member of his 
military family. He made touching mention of the 
dear boy whose death this journal has just chron- 
icled : a single paragraph may be quoted. 

A short time before the battle of the second Manas- 
sas, there came from this town to join the Liberty Hall 



150 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

Volunteers, a fine lad, whose parents (living here) were 
dear friends of General Jackson. The General asked 
him to stay at Headquarters for a few days before join- 
ing his company, and he slept and messed with us. We 
all became much attached to the young fellow, and 
Jackson, in his gentle, winning way, did his best to 
make him feel at home, and at his ease ; the lad's man- 
ners were so gentle, kindly, and diffident, and his beard- 
less, blue-eyed, boyish face so manly and so handsome ! 
Just before the battle, he reported for duty with his 
company. The night of the day of the great battle, I 
was telling the General of the wounded, as we stood 
over a fire where black Jim, his servant, was making 
some coffee. I mentioned many of the wounded, and 
their condition, and presently, calling by name the lad 
we all loved, told him he was mortally wounded. Jim, 
faithful, brave, big-hearted Jim, God bless his memory ! 
rolled on the ground groaning, in his agony of grief, 
but the General's face was a study. The muscles in his 
face were twitching convulsively, and his eyes were all 
aglow. He gripped me by the shoulder till it hurt me, 
and in a savage, threatening manner asked why I had 
left the boy. In a few seconds he recovered himself, 
and turned and walked off into the woods alone. He 
soon came back, however, and I continued my report of 
the wounded and dead. We were still sitting by the 
fire, drinking coffee out of our tin cups, when I said, 
" We have won this battle by the hardest kind of fight- 
ing." And he answered me very gently and softly, 
" No, no, we have won it by the blessing of Almighty 
God." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 

As a break has been made in the war journal, at 
the end of the last chapter, to tell Dr. McGuire's 
little story of Stonewall Jackson's strong affection 
for Willy Preston, this chapter may fittingly open 
with two or three letters from the great soldier, 
from the seat of war : they belong to this year of 
1862: — 

Headquarters, Valley District, 
July 22d, 1862. 

Dear Colonel Preston, — Your letter, and the 
touching poetical production of Maggie have been 
handed me by Cadet Morrison. I have known your 
son Willy long, and hope that an opportunity will offer 
for showing my appreciation of his great worth. Ac- 
cept my thanks for your kindness in advancing funds to 
Cadet Morrison. Please settle it as you suggest, and 
keep the bond until you hear from me upon the subject ; 
unless you should meet with an opportunity of handing 
it to Mrs. Jackson ; but do not send it to her. I con- 
gratulate you upon Frank's return home. Remember 
me very kindly to all enquiring friends. Please say to 
Dr. White that I wish him to pay my stipends last 
due, from the money I sent him by you. I think he 
acknowledged the receipt of the funds, but said no- 



152 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

thing about the stipends, and I fear that he did not feel 
authorized to pay himself from the funds placed in his 
hands ? 

Very truly your friend, 

T. J. Jackson. 

Bunker Hill, Berkeley Co., Va. 
(Undated.) 

My dear Maggie, — In haste I drop you a line in 
answer to your letter of October 3d. I regret not hav- 
ing a position to which with propriety Mr. E. can be 
assigned. The best opening that I see for him is to 
secure an appointment as an ordnance officer. There 
are to be seventy appointed, after being examined by 
a Board upon their qualifications. Mr. E.'s brother is 
among the number. It appears to me that he ought to 
pass upon examination, by giving attention to the sub- 
ject. I am much obliged to you for your kindness. 

I deeply sympathize with you all in the death of dear 
Willy. He was in my first Sabbath school class, where 
I became attached to him when he was a little boy. I 
had expected to have him as one of my aides-de-camp, 
but God in His providence has ordered otherwise. Re- 
member me very kindly to Colonel Preston and all the 
family. 

Affectionately your brother, 

T. J. Jackson. 

Caroline Co., Va., Dec. 22d, 1862. 

Dear Colonel, — I hope that ere this your son 
Randolph is out of danger. I regretted to hear of his 
sickness. 

Before this, you have, I presume, seen the details of 
the recent battle near Fredericksburg. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 153 

I greatly desire to see peace, blessed peace, and I am 
persuaded that if God's people throughout our Con- 
federacy will earnestly and perseveringly unite in im- 
ploring His interposition for peace, that we may expect 
it. Let our Government acknowledge the God of the 
Bible as its God, and we may expect soon to be a happy 
and independent people. It appears to me that ex- 
tremes are to be avoided, and it also appears to me that 
the old United States occupied an extreme position in 
the means it took to prevent the union of Church and 
State. We call ourselves a Christian people, and it 
seems to me our Government may be of the same char- 
acter, without committing itself with an established 
Church. It does appear to me that as our President, our 
Congress, and our people have thanked God for vic- 
tories, and prayed to him for additional ones, and He 
has answered such prayers, and gives us a government, 
that it is gross ingratitude not to acknowledge Him in 
the gifts. 

Let the framework of our government show that 
we are not ungrateful to Him. If you think with me, 
I hope you will use the talent God has given you of 
impressively presenting facts to others, in securing a 
government which will gain God's blessing. Our Con- 
gressional Committee is in favor of repealing the law 
which requires Sabbath mails. Can you not write to 
several members of Congress for the purpose of securing 
their support of the committee's report ? I have only 
seen one member of the House, Mr. Boteler, who warmly 
favors the repeal. 

I am much obliged to you for your kind offer respect- 
ing Albert, &c. Please hire him to any one with whom 
he desires to live : and please ascertain whether Hetty 
has been hired, and If not, may I trouble you to do it 



154 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

f or me ? ... I also wish you would sell my lot the first 
opportunity. I do not desire to keep it any longer. 
You need not consult me about the price, but take what 
you can get. Remember me very kindly to Maggie and 
all the family. I sent her a note from her brother John 
a few days since. He was on the recent battle field. 
Very truly your friend, 

T. J. Jackson. 



To those of us who passed through these scenes 
described in the journal, at Mrs. Preston's side, it 
is a matter of surprise that her tone was so in- 
tensely sad. For terrible as many phases of the 
times were, there was a brighter side, lighted up 
with hope and courage and enthusiasm, and with 
a joyous pride in our brave armies and their 
achievements. There were two reasons why Mrs. 
Preston did not share this happier experience : in 
the first place, she could not, of course, feel the 
same intense love and loyalty to Virginia and 
the Confederacy that we did. She was true to 
the South, believed in the justness of our cause, 
and prayed for the overthrow of our enemies ; but 
it must not be forgotten — for she did not forget 
— that those enemies were her own people, her 
blood kin, whom she loved and honored through 
all, whom she knew to be honest and true also. 
This struggle in such a tender heart was obliged 
to cause unhappiness. 

And then the wife knew — what the younger 
members of the family did not — that her husband 
had not from the first had much expectation of 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 155 

success in the struggle. There were no doubt times 
when our brilliant successes caused him to hope 
that we might wrest independence from the so 
much stronger nation, or gain the interference of 
foreign powers ; but from the first, as Mrs. Pres- 
ton afterwards told us, his calm, judicial mind had 
grasped the hopeless inequality of the contending 
powers, and there were few months when he did 
not fear the worst. Whether she agreed with her 
husband's views or not, this knowledge was obliged 
to lie on Mrs. Preston's heart with a saddening 
weight. This much must be said, in order that 
the younger generation may not have a one-sided 
impression of those four years, before going on 
with the extracts from the journal. 

October 23d, 1862 : Just heard of the birth of Gen- 
eral Jackson's daughter : as much talk and ado about 
it almost, as if it were a little princess ! 

Unexampled drought ! Not rain enough yet to en- 
able the farmers to seed ; consequently they cannot sow 
half crops. What is to become of the country ? The 
fear is that there is not enough food in it to keep the 
people from starving. 

October 21th : Yesterday it rained steadily all day ; 
the first day of continuous rain we have had since Au- 
gust : and even yet, Mr. P. says, in plowing today at 
the farm, they turn up dry earth. 

Mr. P.'s cousin, Rev. R. Taylor here to tea tonight. 
He is a chaplain in the army. It makes me feel de- 
spairing to hear him tell of the ragged and barefoot 
soldiery : of the desolation inflicted by war : of the 
country laid waste, and the houses burned, and the 



156 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

blackened chimneys standing. It is a very serious ques- 
tion how the army is to be clothed and fed this winter. 

November 6th : Randolph [Col. P.'s fourth son] has 
come home from the Institute sick. 

November 10th : Randolph very ill with typhoid 
fever ; has been delirious almost a week. The Dr. thinks 
there is some change for the better. I pray it may be 
God's will to spare his life. A cadet has died at the In- 
stitute, with this same fever, after seven days' illness. 

December 8th : A long hiatus in my little note book. 
Poor Randolph has been trembling in the balance be- 
tween life and death ever since my last entry ; some- 
times the scales seemed descending beyond all hope ; 
again they incline toward the side of life. Today his 
symptoms are more discouraging. 

Dec. 10th: . . . Have had the extreme joy of re- 
ceiving today a short note from my precious sister ; the 
first I have had from her since August 21st, 1881, a 
year and a half ago ! No wonder I rejoice. It con- 
tained comfortable tidings of my beloved ones ; my dear 
Father well and in good spirits ; for which thank God ! 
Julia had received my note of October 28th. 

December 18th : Today, at half past three o'clock in 
the afternoon, our poor suffering Randolph breathed 
his last ! , 

December 19th : This evening, just before sunset, we 
saw the mortal remains of the dear boy committed to 
the grave. It is a sore blow to his precious father, to 
his sisters, and to us all. God grant it may be a sanc- 
tified affliction ! We have surely need of chastisement, 
or it would not have been repeated so painfully, within 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 157 

so brief a period. Three months and a half only, since 
dear Willy laid down his life on the battle field ; and now 
another, as full of life — as perfect a model of health — 
as seemingly fitted for long life as any one I ever saw, 
after a lingering illness of seven weeks, is cut off. How 
mysterious the providence appears ! Few parents have 
as noble boys to lose ; and yet their father bows to the 
stroke with entireness of Christian resignation. May 
God sustain his bruised heart ! 

Had a note from Gen. Jackson yesterday, most kindly 
written amidst the hurry of a day or two succeeding the 
Fredericksburg battle, informing me that Bro. John was 
met on the field by one of his aids, as he was removing 
the dead — he being a Federal surgeon — and that a 
cousin named Junkin, whom I have never seen, was 
among the slain. Bro. John sent word through the aid 
that my friends were all well. I desire to be thankful 
for this last item of information. 

December 24dh : Christmas Eve : How different the 
scene our house presents tonight, and this time last 
year ! Then every one of Mr. P.'s children was here, 
except Frank ; himself only absent ; the utmost hilarity 
reigned. We had a beautiful Christmas tree, filled with 
innumerable presents for everybody, servants and all. 
The Library was a scene of innocent gayety. Dear 
Willy P. distributed the contents of the tree, as his 
Father had done the year before. Everybody was 
pleased and happy. The war had not then claimed any 
victim from our circle, and the chief shadow that for 
that night rested upon us was Mr. P.'s absence in the 
army. Now the sadness of the household forbids any 
recognition of Christmas ; we are scattered to our own 
separate rooms to mourn over the contrast, and the Li- 
brary is in darkness. * Willy, whose genial face rises so 



158 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

brightly before me, lies in a distant grave — cut off by 
a violent death. Randolph's coffin has been carried 
out of the house so recently that no sunshine has yet 
come back. Frank is here with his one arm, making 
me feel perpetually grieved for him. Yet why com- 
plain ? This is nothing to what many others have suf- 
fered. My husband and children are spared to me, so 
that I have peculiar cause for gratitude. I have been 
permitted to hear of my father's and sisters' and bro- 
thers' welfare, too. Surely it does illy become me to ut- 
ter lamentations. Rather let me bless God that his rod 
has been laid on me so lightly. 

December 3\st : Last night of the year ! Servants 
away all day on their holiday, and I have been doing 
much of their work. . . . God grant us a happier year 
in the one to come than the last has been ! 

January 9th: So eventless have the last few days 
been that it has not been worth while to make any note 
of them. Have been busy as usual, sewing, &c. ... It 
is amazing, and sorrowful too, to see how the language, 
operations, &c. of war are understood and imitated by 
the children. Almost their entire set of plays have 
reference to a state of war. George cuts lines of sol- 
diers every day ; marches them about ; has battles ; 
beats " the Yankees," and carries off prisoners. Builds 
hospitals with blocks and corn-cobs ; drives ambulances 
with chairs ; administers pills to his rag-boy-babies, who 
are laid up in bed as sick and wounded soldiers. He 
gets sticks and hobbles about, saying that he lost a leg 
at the Second battle of Manassas ; tells wonderful sto- 
ries of how he cut off Yankees' heads, bayoneted them, 
&c. He has an old cartridge box and haversack, and 
with a stick for a sword, and something stuck in his 
belt for pistols, he struts about, bids me good-by daily 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 159 

with entire gravity, as his furlough is out and he must 
go to his regiment again. Little Herbert also kills 
" Lankees," as he calls them, and can talk war lingo 
almost as well as George. The children are more famil- 
iar with war language than I was when I was grown 
up. They can tell all about pickets, cavalry, cannon, am- 
bulances, &c. Sad indeed that very infancy has learned 
such language ! 

. . . Had a present that I hailed with a joy that can- 
not be easily imagined, yesterday — a pair of coarse 
shoes for little Herbert ! Agnes sent them to him. The 
last two pair I had made him, and I had no more soles, 
so was at my wits' end ; no shoemaker can be prevailed 
upon, for any money, to make a pair of child's shoes. 
Heard W. F. J. say, the other day, that he had married 
K. G. not long since, in a plain bombazine dress, the 
simple dress pattern of which cost $110 ! Potatoes are 
now $5. a bushel. The price of negroes is enormous. 
A young girl sold on the street the other day for a few 
dollars short of $2000. Heard of a not at all " likely " 
woman of 40 and her two babies selling for $3000. 

January 22d : . . . I sew all day, and am busy with 
housekeeping ; never go out, scarcely ; have not paid 
a visit anywhere for months. At night, after the noisy 
children are asleep, I read a little, or hear Mr. P. read ; 
and so the days pass. I think a great deal about my 
father and sister, and am about to try to get a letter to 
them thro' General Jackson. 

January 23d : Wrote to Julia, and sent it by the Rev. 
B. T. Lacy, to General Jackson. 

February 3d : Have been pleasing myself with a very 
rare occupation, today, which brings back my young 
days again ; i. e. drawing a small crayon head. I hap- 



160 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

pened to be not actually pressed with sewing, and so did 
not resist the strong impulse I felt to give my fingers 
a little treat, and substitute the crayon for the needle. 
But the children teased me so that it was the " pursuit 
of accomplishments under difficulties," that I found my- 
self illustrating. 

February 23d : This day nine years ago my precious 
Mother was called hence. I thank God for her holy 
life and blessed death ; for her teaching, her prayers, 
and her example. Surely one of the chiefest joys of 
heaven will be to sit at her feet, and tell her how infi- 
nitely below her merit I now realize my love for her 
to have been. How constantly I dream of her, almost 
every night. How devoted — how judicious — how self- 
denying — how humble-minded — how sweet tempered 
— how forbearing — how faithful — how deeply Chris- 
tian-spirited she was ! Few have had such a mother to 
lose. I often weep over her loss with bitter tears still ; 
and yet I wonder even that time has been able to heal 
the wound which has been so deep, as much as it has 
been healed. I can never attain to such a character, to 
such usefulness, as my Mother ! She had such heavenly 
patience, and how exceedingly impatient am I. But 
these pages are not for reflections or confessions — only 
for bald facts. 

March 11th : . . . Had a note yesterday from Gen. 
Jackson, promising to do all he could to get a letter 
I sent him for Sister Julia, across the lines. His note 
had hardly anything else in it than earnest breathings 
after heavenly peace and rest. He surely is a most 
devoted Christian. All his letters to Mr. P., and he 
writes right often, are full of religious experiences and 
utterances, and pleadings for prayer for himself and his 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 161 

country. He is quite absorbed now in trying to provide 
chaplains for his army. 

March l%th : Planted out a few trees today, which I 
had gotten from a man in Lynchburg ; paid $25 for 
them, and can hardly see them in the yard. Heard 
Phil say that Mr. Jim Smith had sold some fine seed 
potatoes for 25 cents apiece, and that $20 was paid by 
Mr. Tutwiler for one bushel of onions. . . . 

March 24:th : Wrote yesterday to my dear father by 
Flag of Truce ; hope and pray I may succeed in getting 
a reply from him or Julia. 

April 3d : Mr. P. has put us upon soldiers' rations in 
regard to meat ; once a day, a quarter of a pound apiece 
for the whites, and a half pound for the blacks. The 
soldiers have only a quarter of a pound of bacon, and a 
pound of bread. 

April 6th : Have been sick for two days with severe 
cold ; in bed all day Saturday, and not able to be at 
church yesterday. Brother Willy here to dinner today. 
Has just been on a little visit to General Jackson's 
army ; preached there ; says Jackson is longing to be 
out of the field, and at home once more. 

April l&th : We hear much of the danger of the army 
being starved out of Virginia. Mr. P. has let the Gov- 
ernment have every pound of bacon he can spare, after 
putting his family on short allowance. The town is 
crowded with refugees ; heard of four families today ; 
one is a mother with eight children, one of them twenty 
months old, and one four weeks ; they had to fly from 
their homes. Such distresses as we do hear of con- 
tinually ; it is a wonder we dare to feel any thing like 
happiness. Oh ! when will the war cease ! 



162 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

April 15th: . . . Today made two petticoats (for E. 
and self) out of a window curtain. " Necessity is the 
mother of invention." Cut a pair of drawers for Mr. P. 
out of a sheet ; not because I could well spare the sheet, 
but because I had nothing else ; unbleached cotton not 
to be had, or if obtainable, $2 per yard. 

April 18th: . . . We have heard of fighting at 
Fredericksburg ; refugees still crowd into Lexington. 
$75. is now the price asked for board per month, at the 
hotel. 

April 21st : Made a few purchases today ; two com- 
mon gingham aprons for G. for which I gave $12 ! 
Two thin, very common cotton stockings, $4 per pair ! 
Ten cent handkerchiefs at $2.50 apiece. This little 
note book is a record of prices more than any thing 
else ; yet when I look back a year or six months, to 
pages where I have made notices of prices, how very 
reasonable they seem now ! 

April ZOth : This evening Mr. P. left us for Colum- 
bia, S. C, whither he goes as a delegate to the General 
Assembly. [Presbyterian highest church court.] . . . 
This night one year ago he was summoned from his bed 
at midnight, by a despatch from General Jackson, and 
he had to march the next morning with the cadets. 
Thank God he is called away on no such summons to- 
night, but goes on the peaceful errands of the church. 
May the great Head of the church watch over his 
precious life ! 

May 2d : Hear to-day of a prospective battle in Cul- 
peper ; everybody is anxious. . . . 

Monday, Ath : . . . Cannon was distinctly heard by 
many persons yesterday ; great anxiety prevails to hear 



1 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 163 

the tidings ; no mails today ; we hear the Federal army- 
has torn up some miles of railroad. 

May 5th : Today brings news of a terrible battle — 
but no particulars ; only that General Frank Paxton 
is killed; Jackson and A. P. Hill wounded. Of the 
mothers in this town, almost all of them have sons in this 
battle ; not one lays her head on her pillow this night, 
sure that her sons are not slain. This suspense must 
be awful. Mrs. Estill has four sons there ; Mrs. Moore 
two ; Mrs. Graham three, and so on. Yet not a word of 
special news, except that a copy of General Lee's tele- 
gram came, saying, a decided victory, but at great cost. 
God pity the tortured hearts that will pant through this 
night ! And the agony of the poor wife who has heard 
that her husband is really killed ! I was told to-night 
that a few weeks ago General Paxton wrote to his wife, 
sending his will, with minute directions in regard to his 
property ; telling her that he had made a profession of 
religion ; that he was expecting to be killed in the next 
battle, and was resigned and willing to die. 

My brother John is a surgeon in the Federal army ; 
it is routed, we hear ; so I don't know what may be his 
fate; nor can I know. I pray God he may be safe. 
The Northern people can't conceive the horrors of this 
war. It is far away from them ; their private soldiers 
are all from the lower classes — persons with whom the 
masses of Christian and cultivated people feel no tie in 
common ; while the mass of Southern private soldiers 
are from the educated classes ; this makes a woeful dif- 
ference in the suffering a battle entails : not that these 
Dutch and Irish and uneducated people have no friends 
to mourn for them — But oh ! the sickness of soul 
with which almost eyery household in this town awaits 
the tidings to-morrow may bring ! 



164 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

May 1th : Another day of awful suspense, for which 
there is yet no relief. Not a solitary letter or person 
has come from the army to Lexington ; only a telegram 
from Governor Letcher, announcing that Captain Green- 
lee Davidson is killed ; his body and Paxton's are ex- 
pected tomorrow. What fearful times we live in ! 

Friday, 8th : Today we hear that General Jackson's 
arm is amputated, and that he is wounded in the right 
hand. How singular that it should have been done 
through mistake by a volley from his own men ! It 
happened at midnight, Saturday. Major Crutchfield 
is severely wounded by the same volley, and one of the 
staff instantly killed. How must our near neighbors the 
Pendletons feel tonight, knowing that it may be Sandy, 
as he is one of Jackson's staff ! No relief still to the 
tormenting suspense which is hanging over almost every 
household. Not a letter yet from the army. 

May 10th, Sabbath : This afternoon Dr. White at- 
tempted to hold service ; but just as he was beginning, 
the mail arrived, and so great was the excitement, and 
so intense the desire for news, that he was obliged to 
dismiss the congregation. We only hear of one more 
death among Lexington boys, young Imboden. Several 
wounded; this is much better than we had dared to 
hope. 

May 12th : Tuesday : Last night I sat at this desk 
writing a letter to General Jackson, urging him to 
come up and stay with us, as soon as his wound would 
permit him to move. I went down stairs this morning 
early, with the letter in my hand, and was met by the 
overwhelming news that Jackson was dead ! A tele- 
gram had been sent to Colonel Smith by a courier from 
Staunton. Doubt was soon thrown upon this by the 
arrival of some one from Richmond, who said he had 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 165 

left when the telegram did, and there was no such 
rumor in Richmond. So, between alternate hope and 
fear, the day passed. It was saddened by the bringing 
home of General Paxton's remains, and by his funeral. 
At five this evening the startling confirmation comes — 
Jackson is indeed dead ! My heart overflows with sor- 
row. The grief in this community is intense ; everybody 
is in tears. What a release from his weary two years' 
warfare ! To be released into the blessedness and peace 
of heaven ! . . . How fearful the loss to the Confeder- 
acy ! The people made an idol of him, and God has 
rebuked them. No more ready soul has ascended to 
the throne than was his. Never have I known a holier 
man. Never have I seen a human being as thoroughly 
governed by duty. He lived only to please God ; his 
daily life was a daily offering up of himself. All his 
letters to Mr. P. and to me since the war began, have 
breathed the spirit of a saint. In his last letter to me 
he spoke of our precious Ellie, and of the blessedness of 
being with her in heaven. And now he has rejoined 
her, and together they unite in ascribing praises to Him 
who has redeemed them by his blood. Oh, the havoc 
death is making! The beautiful sky and the rich, 
perfumed spring air seemed darkened by oppressive 
sorrow. Who thinks or speaks of victory ? The word 
is scarcely ever heard. Alas ! Alas ! When is the end 
to be? 

May 15th: Friday: General Jackson was buried 
today, amid the flowing tears of a vast concourse of 
people. By a strange coincidence, two cavalry com- 
panies happened to be passing through Lexington from 
the West, just at the hour of the ceremonies: they 
stopped, procured mourning for their colors, and joined 



166 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

the procession. . . . The exercises were very appro- 
priate ; a touching voluntary was sung with subdued, 
sobbing voices ; a prayer from Dr. Ramsay of most 
melting tenderness; very true and discriminating re- 
marks from Dr. White, and a beautiful prayer from 
W. F. J. — The coffin was draped in the first Con- 
federate flag ever made, and presented by Pres. Davis 
to Mrs. Jackson; it was wrapped around the coffin, 
and on it were laid multitudes of wreaths and flowers 
which had been piled upon it all along the sad journey 
to Richmond and thence to Lexington. The grave 
too was heaped with flowers. And now it is all over, 
and the hero is left " alone in his glory." Not many 
better men have lived and died. His body-servant said 
to me, " I never knew a piouser gentleman." Sincerer 
mourning was never manifested for any one, I do think. 
. . . The dear little child is so like her father ; she is a 
sweet thing, and will be a blessing, I trust, to the heart- 
wrung mother. 

M ay Vdth : My birthday. I would record my thank- 
fulness to God for His special favors to me through the 
past year. I would commit into His wise and gracious 
hands all the future. I would set before myself three 
special things for the coining year ; an aiming after 
spiritual-mindedness ; the cultivation of a spirit of 
prayer; and the daily keeping in view God's glory. 

June 1st: As I mean to keep a note of the way 
prices advance, I will mention that the perfectly plain 
crepe bonnet which Mrs. Jackson got in Richmond cost 
$75 and a bombazine dress, as plain as could be made, 
cost about $180. Mr. P. paid for some days' work of 
a white man, a short while ago, at $8 per diem. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 167 

June 16th: . . . Continued anxiety about the fate 
of Vicksburg. Everybody is watching eagerly for the 
result. 

June 20th : Yesterday brought news of the capture 
of Winchester by Ewell. Two ladies, refugees from 
the neighborhood of Winchester, who have been here 
for some months, called on me this morning. They 
say they are heart-sick of exile, and long to fly home. 
W. F. J. here for dinner ; is just back from the army ; 
says the religious interest is wonderfully great; had 
strangers to follow him often about camp, to ask about 
their souls' salvation. . . . 

June 2A&h : . . . Hear that Lee's army is invading 
my native State. Well! Virginia has endured it for 
more than two years ! So I must not think it hard that 
another State whose troops have been helping to ravage 
her all this time, should take its turn. 

June 25th: The joy of a note from Julia by Flag 
of Truce. Thank God ! my beloved father and sister 
are well, and my other friends too. I wrote instanter 
in answer. 

June 30th : Bought E. a ninepence calico dress to- 
day, for which I gave $30 ! Unbleached, very coarse 
cottons are now $2.25 per yard. 

July 1st : The papers are full of the accounts of the 
advance of the Confederate army into Penna. I trust 
this army will not be guilty of the outrages which have 
everywhere characterized the Federal armies in Vir- 
ginia. It is perhaps well that those who still keep up 
this terrible war should have some short experience of 
what war is. But this will not give it to them. The 
country would have to be overrun for two years before 
the Pennsylvanians could know what the Virginians 
know of war. Our town is so full of refugees, people 



168 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

who have fled from their homes, that I scarcely know 
anybody I meet. . . . 

July 1th : Mr. P. started this morning for Harri- 
sonburg, on business. We hear this evening startling 
tidings — that a great battle has been fought at Gettys- 
burg ; 4000 Southerners captured; 12,000 Federals killed 
— three generals among them, and three wounded. I 
do not feel disposed to give half credit to the news ; we 
always hear such exaggerated accounts at first. Sister's 
sons [Mrs. Cocke's] are with Longstreet, and her anxi- 
ety is intense, as that division, it is said, lost so heavily. 

July 11th: We rode out to Bro. Will's today, 
Sister, the children and I ; had a pleasant day ; re- 
turned at nightfall, to be met by the alarming news 
that of Sister's two boys, Edmund [the Captain] is 
slightly wounded, and William missing, perhaps killed ! 
. . . The household is wrapped in gloom. Mr. P. 
thinks from what he heard of the fearful loss in Pick- 
ett's Division, that William is most probably killed. 

November 6th : A lovely day, and in contrast to the 
feelings of the whole population. Last night I became 
uneasy at Mr. P.'s not coming home from the Institute 
till near ten o'clock, so I went out to meet him, taking 
Johnny along. After waiting a half hour on the street, 
he came at last, but with the alarming tidings that a 
courier had come in from the West, asking that the 
cadets and the Home Guard should be forthwith sent to 
the assistance of Col. Jackson 1 and Imboden ; that 7000 

1 This was Colonel William L. Jackson, a cousin of Stonewall 
Jackson, and a former lieutenant-governor of Virginia. Hia 
men nicknamed him "Mudwall " Jackson, a play upon the sobri- 
quet of his more famous kinsman. — E. P. A. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 169 

of the enemy were between Jackson and the Warm 
Springs. So we were up before day this morning ; I 
with a heavy heart. The cadets have gone, and the 
Home Guard from the various parts of the country. 
Mr. P. gone too ; I feel very desolate. Bro. Eben 
stopped to dinner ; on his way his horse fell with him 
and hurt him considerably, but he will try to go on. 
[The Rev. E. D. Junkin, then pastor of New Providence 
church, about sixteen miles from Lexington.] Tlie 
whole town is in commotion ; no men left in it ; even 
those over sixty-five have gone. I can't help hoping 
they may not have to stay any time or fight a battle. 

Nov. 8th, Sunday : But little like the day of sacred 
rest. Last night, after dark, and just after I had heard 
that 14,000 of the enemy were advancing, and there had 
been two days' fighting near Hunters vi lie, or rather, 
twelve miles this side, and when my mind was filled 
with discouragement, G., who had gone out, was heard 
to exclaim, " Here is Papa ! " Yes ! to my joy — but 
he had hardly drawn off his gloves, had certainly not 
been one minute in the house, before he was sent for to 
receive a dispatch brought by a courier, summoning the 
cadets to Covington. He started out at once, but came 
back and stayed until morning, when he hastened on to 
join the corps, and march towards Covington. We 
went to church, but the services were interrupted by the 
announcement that the ladies must go home and make 
instantly 250 haversacks. All was commotion and anx- 
iety. The congregation had been anxious before ; it was 
composed wholly of females, and a few old men and 
boys ; but all anxiety was heightened. Met Mr. Mid- 
dleton as I came home, who was just returning to hurry 
on provisions. All the force of the county is ordered to 
Clifton Forge for the present. The whole available 



170 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

force is so small, that if there are 14,000 of the enemy- 
near Lewisburg, pushing on eastward, this handful can't 
keep them back. The reason Imboden sent Mr. P. the 
dispatch yesterday to send the corps back, was because 
he said he was moving so rapidly that only mounted 
men would avail him any thing. But now infantry and 
everything is desired. 

Monday, Nov. 9th : We hear today that Echols has 
had a fight at Lewisburg with 8000 of the enemy, and 
been badly whipped — lost all his artillery, and many 
of his men. Hear too that the Home Guard and cadets 
are ordered on from Clifton Forge to Covington, so that 
the provision that was started last night would not reach 
them. All is anxiety. So hurriedly did many go off, 
that they carried no blankets, and some went with cot- 
ton clothes only. Mr. P. went with a pair of worn-out 
summer boots, and without an article of clothing but 
what he had on ; not even an extra pair of stockings. 
It is bitterly cold tonight ; snowed a little today ; the 
coldest day of the season as yet. I am tasting some of 
the cruel anxieties which war occasions. 

Tuesday, Nov. \§th: Hear that there was fighting 
yesterday all day at Callihans, six miles west of Cov- 
ington ; that the Home Guard and cadets were being 
pushed on as fast as they could move, in order to assist, 
and expected to arrive at 4 o'clock, P. M. So my hus- 
band and Bro. W. may have been in a battle — may be 
wounded — may be prisoners — may be killed — all is 
uncertainty. These torturing rumors are very hard to 
bear. 

Exceedingly cold today. A Flag of Truce note from 
Julia to W. — Father is sick, to add to my anxieties. 
Had a letter in reply to mine to Judge Ould about Wil- 
liam Cocke. Mine was sent on to Washington City, and 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 171 

is returned endorsed, " No record of W. F. Cocke." So 
that settles the question ; he perished in the assault upon 
Gettysburg. I have to communicate this to his mother. 
What awful times we live in ! 

Nov. 11th : I feel angry when I have been tortured 
to no purpose, as now. This evening the Cadets and 
Home Guard are back again without anything happen- 
ing to them. I have heard no particulars; last night 
rumor after rumor reached us, and at last we became 
convinced that they were really on the return. Imboden 
had a slight skirmish with the enemy, but whether any 
of the Rockbridge forces took part in it, I don't know. 
Mr. P. has not returned ; stayed to hunt deer oh the 
mountain, as he failed to find Yankees ! 

Nov. 12th: After dark last night Mr. P. returned, 
and I find that I was greatly mistaken in supposing 
that the hurrying out of the Rockbridge forces had ac- 
complished nothing. But for their acting as Imboden's 
reserve, he would not have dared to open fire upon the 
enemy as they approached Covington. Strange to say, 
although they numbered several thousand (for Imboden 
himself counted 90 wagons in the train), they retreated 
at the first fire towards Huntersville. It was discovered 
afterwards that they had heard of large reinforcements 
being received by Imboden, which it is supposed they 
thought were from Lee. Every body expected a fight, 
and I think there was general disappointment that there 
was only a skirmish. For the present, the forces have 
returned, and gone to their homes ; with the expectation, 
however, that at any time they may be recalled. 

Nov. l§th : Was present tonight at Louisa Brocken- 
borough's wedding at the Episcopal Church ; a beautiful 
affair ; eight bridesmaids ; one of the bride's silk dresses 
cost between $500 & $600 for the unmade material. 



172 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Wood is now $30 per cord; flour $100 per barrel in 
Richmond, $50 here, and rising. Butter selling here 
by the quantity for $3.50 per lb. 

Nov. 24dh : Wrote today to my dear father by Flag 
of Truce. Still suffering with my eyes, so as not to be 
able to read or write much. I pretend not to sew any, 
but am constrained to do some almost every day, though 
I always suffer in consequence. 

Nov. 25th : Last night Sister and P. came : Sister 
does not allude in any way to William, nor have we 
mentioned his name to her. She must surely believe in 
her heart that he has perished, though she will not allow 
it to herself. 

Nov. 26th: Had 12 hogs killed today. 

Nov. 21th : Busy with putting up pork. Got a 
wretched cold. 

Dec. 2d : All day Sunday sick in bed ; not much 
better on Monday; and today still hors du combat. 
Weather very cold ; river frozen. 

Dec. Ath : Bro. E. came up yesterday on business ; 
bought 150 lbs. of brown sugar, and gave for it $450. 

Bad news from Bragg and the Southwest, and every- 
body discouraged. 

A recent fight on the Rapidan ; one of our neighbors 
had a son killed ; one other person from the town also 
killed. 

Dec. 11th : Sister had a letter last night, giving posi- 
tive information of William Cocke's death. He was 
instantly killed on July 3d and fell without a groan. 
She bears this confirmation of her worst fears better 
than we could have expected ; the long suspense has 
broken the shock in some measure. 

Dec. 6th: Again the Cadets and Home Guard are 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 173 

summoned out ; they started yesterday ; and Mr. P. 
went early this morning. It is a cold raw day, and 
they will find marching and bivouacing in the open air 
very disagreeable. The reports are that the enemy is 
advancing upon the Valley from four different points. 
When will these alarms cease ? I am in despair about 
the war. 

Dec, 18th / Went on the street to hear some news ; 
found that a dispatch had been received, ordering a 
body of men to go on to Pattonsburg to burn down the 
fine bridge over the James river, to prevent AveriU's 
escape ; Averill is at Salem with 4000 men. 

At 11 o'clock, Imboden's cavalry and artillery passed 
through. It is the first time I have seen an army. 
Poor fellows ! with their broken down horses, muddy up 
to the eyes, and their muddy wallets and blankets, they 
looked like an army of tatterdemalions ; the horses 
looked starved. Then came the Home Guard, drenched 
and muddy, as if they had seen hard service, though they 
had only been out four days; but such weather! It 
rained terribly, the rain part of the time freezing as it 
fell ; and they were out in it all : stood round their fires 
all night, or lay down in the puddles of water. At 
3 p. m. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee's cavalry (2700) passed 
through. Their horses were in better condition. All 
the men in both divisions looked in fine spirits, and 
cheered vociferously as the ladies waved scarves and 
handkerchiefs on their passing. People brought out 
waiters of eatables for the poor tired men. I put our 
dinner, which was just ready, on a waiter, and sent it 
down to them. Found Bro. E. and brought him home 
to dinner, and filled his haversack. All went on to 
Collierstown last night. Bro. W. is Lt. Col. of the 
Home Guards. They were all sent on for the protection 



174 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

of Lexington last night, it being supposed that Averill 
would advance upon us from Salem. An exciting day 
indeed. 

At night my husband came ; the Cadets were water 
bound ; some of them waded to their waists in water, 
building bridges for artillery. Mr. P. says he saw one 
marching along in his naked feet. This is "glorious 
war " ! 

Received a note from A. enclosing a Flag of Truce 
letter from J. Thankful that my dear father is better. 
J. says, " It does n't matter how soon all of us go." 
She would feel so indeed, if she were in the midst of 
such war scenes as now surround us. 

Dec. Vdth: Busy all forenoon getting breakfasts for 
soldiers, and filling haversacks. Two young cousins of 
Mr. P. (Moncures) who have lived most of their lives 
in Paris, came, looking as rough and dirty as any of 
the soldiers we saw yesterday. They belong to Lee's cav- 
alry, and had straggled behind. We fed them, mended 
them up, and they passed on refreshed. I asked one of 
them if he could realize that he used to promenade the 
" Boulevards" and take his dinner at the " Palais 
Royal." Their father is worth millions. . . . Yet these 
young men were just as merry and contented as possible, 
though living a life infinitely harder than the worst 
worked slave. One of them had on coarse jeans trou- 
sers. The cadets are to go on to Buchanan tomorrow 
morning. The weather is bitterly cold, the roads very 
bad, and hard frozen. This day a twelvemonth poor 
Randolph was buried. 

" Pain in the heart — pain in the head — 
Grief for the living — grief for the dead ! " 

Sunday, December 20th. An order from Imboden 
for the cadets to march to Buchanan. They started 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONTINUED 175 

this morning. Mr. P. went at noon. A very cold 
day. 

December 21st : Averill has escaped ! To-day Mr. 
P. returned ; also Eben : all are terribly chagrined at 
the escape of Averill. We hear thro' a dispatch from 
Staunton that the enemy is advancing from Harrison- 
burg. A letter to-night from Sister Julia; thankful 
that my father is better. 

December 24:th : Making a few simple preparations 
for Christmas, such as crullers with molasses, and mince 
pies without sugar or fruit or spirit. The Moncures 
came back at night, worn out with their bootless march- 
ing. They blame E. with the miscarriage of the expe- 
dition against Averill. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 

New Year's Day, 1864 : How times flies ! though his 
wings are heavy. Had hardly gotten used to '63, when 
here is '64 upon me. A bright beautiful day, after ten 
days' rain and snow. . . . Roads and streets terribly 
muddy ; scarcely attempt going out. Most of the ser- 
vants back again. Excessively cold. 

January 2d : The coldest day of the season ; river 
frozen over ; can hardly keep warm at all. Poor peo- 
ple, soldiers' wives, &c, coming every day for flour and 
wood ; Mr. P. supplies very many of them. 

January Ath : Snowing and sleeting : . . . Busy cut- 
ting out clothes for Mr. P.'s new farm servants. 

January 23d : Wrote a letter which I mean to try to 
get through the lines to Julia. Weather mild and fine. 

January 21th: Had the Ruffners, Cousin R. Tay- 
lor's family, Dr. Madison, Mr. Norton, and two or three 
others to tea this evening ; the first company invited to 
tea, I believe, since the war began. Had an agreeable 
evening. Weather beautiful and mild as May. . . . 
Had a pleasant ride on horseback with Mr. P. this 
evening. 

February 3d: Have been making some notes for 
Dr. Dabney lately, relative to Jackson ; find my eyes a 
great barrier in the way of my doing it properly. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 177 

February 10^: Have been suffering more than 
usual with my eyes, so as not to be able to use them at 
all. . . . Rev. W. H. Ruffner here after tea ; felt very 
much depressed by the tenor of his and Mr. P.'s con- 
versation : they seem to think that the Valley must be 
relinquished this summer. 

February l$th : Everybody is in an excitement about 
the currency bill, which we heard of last night. Con- 
federate money is refused this morning. On the 1st of 
April it is to sink to two thirds its present value ; so 
everybody is trying to get it off their hands. I have 
ceased noting the prices of things, they are so incredi- 
ble ; as, for example, $30 per gallon for sorghum 
molasses ; calico, $12 per yard ; tallow candles, $6 
per pound; unbleached cotton, $5 per yard. It is 
astonishing how coolly we talk about the probability 
next summer of having to relinquish the Valley, and 
how our plans take in that probability. Oh! but we 
are growing weary of this horrid war! How it op- 
presses us ! 

February 23d. This day ten years ago my blessed 
mother went from us to Heaven. I have thought much 
about her to-day, and have recalled the anguish of losing 
her. What she is spared in not being here now ! 

February 26th : The currency is in a transition state, 
and it does create the strangest difficulties. Sister pays 
today $20 for having a home-made cotton dress made 
up. Unbleached cottons are $8 per yard. People are 
trading as far as possible, instead of paying money. 
As for example, the shoemaker tells me that he won't 
make a pair of shoes for me unless I send him a load 
of wood ; so before the shoes can be had, the wood is 
sent. Flour is selling -at $250 per barrel. 



178 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

February 29th : G. and H. at Sally White's birth- 
day party ; H. said they had " white mush " on the 
table ; on inquiry, I found it was ice-cream ! Not hav- 
ing made any ice-cream since war-times, the child had 
never seen any, and so called it white mush. The only 
luxury I long for is real coffee. I have drunk wheat 
coffee for more than two years, till I am made a dys- 
peptic by it. Coffee has sold at $16 a pound. Tea is 
now $40 per pound. 

April l%th : A long hiatus in my notes : I have had 
a severe attack of illness, from which I have scarcely 
fully recovered. Took cold from exposure in having 
some trees set out, and had internal neuralgia, and after 
that something like gastritis ; was confined to bed about 
a fortnight ; have regained my strength very slowly. 

April 26th : Busy getting Mr. P. ready to go to the 
General Assembly, which meets at Charlotte, N. C, to 
which he is a delegate. Busy too in putting up a box 
of provisions to send to the army to Frank Wilson. 

April 29th : This evening Mr. P. and T. started to 
the General Assembly. A curious commentary upon 
the times is that I had to prepare provisions sufficient 
for the journey, for them to take along, as nothing can 
be gotten on the way. All travellers carry their own 
food, even for a five days' journey. 

May 10th : The anniversary of Jackson's death. A 
flag sent from England was reared over his grave this 
morning with appropriate ceremonies. He is safe from 
the fearful turmoil of war ! Had two letters from Sister 
Julia last week, written a fortnight apart. She has re- 
ceived none of the letters I sent through the lines. This 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 179 

is discouraging. My hands are rheumatic and I can 
hardly hold a pen. 

May 11th : We surely " dwell in the midst of alarms." 
We were roused from our beds this morning at five 
o'clock by an order for the impressment of our horses 
to haul the Institute cannon : then came Frank, Preston 
Cocke, and William Lewis for a hurried breakfast, and 
provision for their haversacks ; ordered towards Win- 
chester, where is Seigle with a large Yankee force. They 
left at seven o'clock ; all the Home Guard is ordered 
out too ; so Lexington is left without men. Last night 
firing was heard by a great many persons, more dis- 
tinctly they say than ever before. They suppose it to 
be at Richmond. I 'm thankful my husband is away, 
on the errand of God's Church, and so escapes going to 
Winchester. He will regret it no little ! 

I was very much struck, a few weeks ago, in listen- 
ing to my children at play. They dramatized that fa- 
miliar passage in Childe Harold as closely as if it had 
been explained to them, — 

" There was a sound of revelry by night," &c. 

Of course they had never even heard it read ; but they 
got their " Mammy " to cut paper soldiers and ladies ; 
then they had a " party," and made the soldiers and 
ladies dance together. While they were busy dancing, 
came a shout from George : " The enemy — the Yan- 
kees — they are coming ! Your guns ! Your guns ! " 
So the soldiers tore themselves away. "There was 
mounting in hot haste," and they made them rush to bat- 
tle, leaving the poor paper ladies scattered disconsolately 
about the floor. The thought of war is never out of 
our minds. If it could be, our children would bring it 



180 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

back by their plays ! For they are almost wholly of a 
military character. Oh ! when will the end come ! No 
mail last night ; but news by stage that Pickett has 
been successful above Petersburg. 

May 13th : Still no mail from Richmond, and only 
rumors of the continuous fighting. I feel oppressed and 
spiritless. No letters from Mr. P. ; the enemy are at 
Salem ; if they come on to Lynchburg, Mr. P. is cut off 
from his home, and I will not even be able to hear from 
him. 

May 18th : Surely we have fallen upon evil times ! 
Last night we received intelligence of the very severe 
battle at or near New Market, between Breckenridge 
and Seigle ; the latter was repulsed, and is retreating, 
pursued by Breckenridge. The Cadets asked to be per- 
mitted to take the front ; they were allowed to do so. 
(Later, this is doubtful, but General B. says, " They 
behaved splendidly ! ") Five of them were killed, and 
forty-five wounded, some of them very badly. For a 
while we did not know but that Frank or Preston Cocke 
or William Lewis were among the killed ; but when the 
list came, we could not find their names ! Thank God 
for sparing them ! But they are pushing the enemy on ; 
another battle will probably ensue, and then their turn 
may come. We received a Richmond paper, the first 
for ten days, and find that a fight has taken place near 
Sister's ; thirty killed ; and there she is, alone on her 
plantation ; her three only sons in battle. How do we 
ever live through such scenes as are daily coming to our 
notice ! The reserve is ordered out all over the State. 
Matters are touching the point of desperation. All 
seems to depend upon the final throw. We will soon 
have attained " the zenith point of hope," or " the nadir 
of despair." 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 181 

Father and J. do not begin to conceive what we go 
through here. How should they ? Thank God they 
do not ! 

May 19th : My birthday. I feel the pressure of years 
upon me in this respect, that all life seems sadder ; 
hope's wings droop ; illusions vanish. Yet am I a slow 
learner of the solemn lessons thus taught me. Letters 
from Frank ; the Cadets have had a severe time of it. 
Several have died of their wounds ; forty-five were 
wounded. They are now ordered on to Richmond, by 
the Secretary of War, and I expect nothing else than that 
they are in for the remainder of the war, and my hus- 
band with them. We hear nothing but tales of blood. 
Today comes another report of a fight between Lee and 
Grant, and the details of Beauregard's success at Rich- 
mond. Pickett's Division stormed the enemy's breast- 
works, and have 700 or 800 killed and wounded. E. C. 
is in this Division ; we know not whether he has fallen, 
and are afraid to hear. People busy here scraping lint ; 
the schools dismissed in order that the children may 
help. . . . 

May 23d : At nine o'clock this night my husband re- 
turned home, safe, having walked twenty miles owing to 
a break in the canal. . . . He has had a very pleasant 
trip ; was ten days on the way returning ; the difficulty 
of travelling is now almost insurmountable. Anna Jack- 
son came on as far as Greensboro' on her way to Lex- 
ington, but was obliged to give up the attempt to come 
further. The Government absorbs the railroads for the 
transportation of troops and supplies, and no passenger 
cars are run. 

May 26th: We have prayer-meetings very well at- 
tended every afternoon at four o'clock. They are very 



182 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

general all over the country. Oh ! that the Hearer of 
prayer would answer the thousands of petitions that 
rise from all parts of the land ! Alarms every day. 

June 3d : All was quietness with us yesterday ; today 
we are all in excitement and alarm. A courier has 
come in with news that the enemy is this side of Coving- 
ton (40 miles off), and is advancing, and no force that 
we know of between us and them. General J. is some- 
where out there. Again we hear that the Yankees are 
17 miles from Staunton ; so that we are between two 
fires. People are busy packing up silver and valu- 
ables ; negroes are coming in from west of us ; and all is 
distraction. The few men here are going out to-night 
to join J. if they can find him. They are more likely 
to be taken prisoners, it seems to me. Mr. P. is not well ; 
has had fever every day since his return home ; yet he 
goes out to-night, and will be in the saddle all night. 
He is making arrangements to have our bacon and flour 
hidden away, and his stock driven over the mountain. 
My heart sinks within me. Are we to experience what 
so many others have suffered ? God deliver us ! Let 
our help be in Thee ! 

June Ath: Such a blessed deliverance ! Mr. P. was 
all ready to start out with the scouting party — his horse 
saddled — to start in an hour, when a messenger came in 
with the tidings that J. had had a sharp skirmish with 
an advance party of Averill, and on McCausland's com- 
ing up with 4 regiments, they retreated. McCausland 
is now between us and the enemy. General Jones is 
coming on from Salem ; so we feel respited. 

Sunday, June 6th : No sooner is one alarm over than 
another comes. Mr. P. took me down to the hospital 
this morning, to see some wounded cadets, one of whom 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 183 

was wounded in seven places, and will probably die. 
As we returned, and were stopping at Mr. Sam Moore's, 
to see a V. M. I. professor who had a piece of his skull 
grooved out by a minnie ball, we were startled by the 
news that the enemy were at Milboro'. We reached 
the church just as the services were closing, so did not 
go in. Found that Gen. W. E. Jones's command was 
approaching the town, only two miles out. At dusk, in 
walked Capt. George Junkin and another officer ; they 
belong to Jones' division, and have left their companies 
five miles out, to come in and pass the night with us. 
We were just about to have our bread and milk sup- 
per handed ; but of course more substantial fare had 
to be prepared for tired soldiers; so we all had real 
coffee, biscuits, and bacon ; a royal repast for these 
times. . . . 

Monday, June 1th : This has been one of the most 
exciting days we have ever had here. At half past six 
we gave the soldiers breakfast, and filled their haver- 
sacks. But at breakfast we heard of Gen. Elzey's 
arrival in town, and of the burning of the woollen 
factory of which Mr. P. is part owner, at Port Repub- 
lic. After breakfast, we all went down street, to see 
the passage of the troops, 1700 men ; G.'s company 
among them. Poor fellows ! It was melancholy to see 
them with the bouquets with which the ladies had 
saluted them, in their hands. Such a mockery in the 
fresh, brilliant-looking flowers, and their soiled, jaded 
appearance. I knew they were marching to meet the 
enemy, and must be brought into action at once, and I 
could not but know that many of them would soon lie 
down in death. A courier arrived, as they came through 
the place, with news of an engagement a few miles from 
Staunton, in which Geit. Jones was killed. He had just 



184 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

reached the place — had only a small portion of his com- 
mand with him, but he collected parts of some scattered 
commands, and attempted to withstand the enemy. His 
own troops fought bravely, but the others ran shame- 
fully : Jones threw himself into the thickest of the 
fight to rally them, and fell dead. It is a great loss ; he 
was esteemed a fine officer ; was an attached friend of 
Gen. Jackson. 

All has been wild excitement this afternoon. Stages 
and wagons loaded with negroes poured in from Staun- 
ton. Everybody was in alarm. In the midst of it, 
after hearing that the enemy was in possession of 
Waynesboro and Staunton both, we went to the daily 
prayer meeting. There Dr. White calmed the people 
by a succinct statement of facts, so far as it was possible 
to obtain them. . . . 

June 1th : A courier has brought in the intelligence 
that Averill's force is at Jordan's Furnace, between 20 
and 30 miles from this, and advancing this way. That 
the force engaged with Jones was not Averill's : prob- 
ably Crooke's. People are more certain to-day of " the 
Yankees coming " than they have been at all yet, be- 
cause there is not a soldier between them and us, and if 
they chose to ride into Lexington to-night, there is not 
a thing to hinder them, all the Confederates having 
passed on to Staunton or its neighborhood. Mr. P. is 
as busy as he can be, getting things at the V. M. I. 
moved away. The library has been carried to the Col- 
lege. As the Institute is Government property, they 
will most likely burn it ; that, at all events, is what we 
apprehend. We have hidden our own valuables to some 
extent ; and Mr. P. is having his bacon hauled into the 
mountains. Yet the enemy may not come ; we have 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 185 

expected them so often when they did n't come, that we 
may be delivered again. Gen. Elzey has passed on to 
Lynchburg to-day. 

Later : At half past four o'clock we went to the daily 
prayer-meeting. Dr. White gave us what information 
he had been able to collect ; told us that the enemy was 
certainly on his way hither; but inculcated calm reliance 
upon God ; said the force advancing would not reach us 
today ; and appointed the meeting for to-morrow, saying 
that we should come, unless it was dangerous for ladies 
to be upon the street. As we went from the Lecture 
Room, three couriers rode up, and the street was crowded 
from one pavement to the other. We found that Imbo- 
den, Jackson, and McCausland are all with their small 
forces falling back ; that the enemy took possession of 
Staunton yesterday at one o'clock ; burnt a large factory 
and the railroad Depot ; and it is said the Virginia 
Hotel ; and were advancing this way. All was such 
commotion as I have never seen in Lexington ; people 
moving flour, goods, &c. ; driving out their cows ; ladies 
flying about in a high state of excitement. A little 
while after I reached home, in came E. and Mr. W. 
from Brownsburg, fugitives from the enemy. E.'s car- 
riage was broken, so he could not bring his wife and 
children to us ; but he took them and the servants over 
to Mrs. W.'s ; moved out his bacon, and what flour he 
had, shut up his house, and left it to its fate. At his 
church on Sunday, a courier arrived, and demanded in 
the name of Gen. McC. that the citizens should turn out 
en masse and blockade two of the mountain passes. E. 
went with them ; spent all Sunday night cutting down 
trees, and was near enough to Crooke's camp to hear 
the band ; almost to distinguish the tunes ; heard ten 
reveilles, which would indicate ten regiments ; saw the 



186 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

camp fires. When he left home, McC. had passed his 
house coming this way ; the enemy was several miles 
above Brownsburg. Agnes is pretty brave; she was 
willing to be left alone in the house, the only white 
person, with her little children. All her anxiety was to 
get E. off. I was busy until ten o'clock getting off our 
bacon and flour, which E. tells me the enemy is taking 
all along the route. 

June Sth : I must continue to make some notes, as I 
have opportunity. . . . Listened all night for the knock 
of the courier who was to return to Mr. P. bringing 
tidings from McCausland ; but he did not come till 
morning. McC says he will dispute the whole way 
with the enemy. ... A cadet, who will probably die, 
is to be removed to our house from the V. M. I. hospital 
this morning. I am about to have the library carpet 
lifted, and the room prepared for him ; he is too ill to 
be taken upstairs. Mr. P.'s overseer was to drive the 
cattle off from the farm at daylight. We wait the 
unfolding of events. I would that my father and J. 
knew the situation in which I find myself to-day. I 
wonder if they wouldn't pray for the defeat of those 
who are coming against us ! Mr. P. talks of going to 
join McC. He can't stay here ; but with McC. he could 
only go into the ranks, and he holds a Lt. Col.'s commis- 
sion. I pray he may not go ; for what can that handful 
of men do ? They may harass a little, but are too small 
a force to make a stand, without the prospect of being 
cut to pieces. 

June 9th : Part of Crooke's command came as far as 
Brownsburg (they were four miles from E.'s house), 
and there they turned around and went back to Staun- 
ton, we hear. All this seems very inconsistent; why 
should they come up the Valley Road this far, and wheel 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 187 

round with nothing before them but McC.'s and J.'s little 
remnants of regiments ? It is quite mysterious, for it 
seems to have accomplished nothing. 

Saturday Morning, June 11th : Last night all our 
alarm was again aroused by a courier arriving with the 
news that the enemy had turned suddenly back, and 
were in full force at Brownsburg, and that McCausland 
was retreating with his 1400 men before him. This 
was soon confirmed by the arrival of brother Eben and 
Mr. W. again fleeing. The enemy's column entered 
Brownsburg as they left ; they stayed long enough to 
hear the musketry of the skirmishers ; this return was 
so sudden that they had barely time to escape. Some 
of the Institute professors were here to tea ; all had to 
depart at once, when Mr. P. came in saying that he had 
just read a dispatch from McC. saying that he would be 
here in two hours, and that the enemy was at Cedar 
Grove, eight miles from this. Sure enough, in less than 
two hours, McC's men were at Cameron's farm. Mr. P. 
and two of the officers rode out to see McC. — did not 
get back till three in the morning ; we sitting up till 
then. Indeed we did not go to bed at all ; only threw 
ourselves down for an hour or so. The cadets have 
been under arms all night ; have not yet moved. Resist- 
ance was at first spoken of ; but there are only three 
of the Institute cannon brought back, and McC. has 
found to his cost that it is in vain to offer opposition 
with such a mere handful as could be brought together, 
4 to the ten thousand who are approaching. So certain 
did we feel yesterday that the danger was for the time 
over, that Mr. P. had his stock all brought back from 
the mountains, and I had " unhid " as George says, our 
silver. At once Uncle Young [a trusted servant] was 
dispatched with the carriage horses to Overseer Clark, 



188 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

and he was ordered to proceed at daylight to the moun- 
tains. A courier came in at ten o'clock p.m. saying 
that another force was advancing by way of Kerr's 
Creek ; whereupon E. and the gentlemen from Browns- 
burg, one a wounded Lt., mounted and decamped. If 
the enemy advances on Lexington this morning, McC. 
will most probably burn our bridge, and retreat, the 
Cadets with him, on the Lynchburg road. Mr. P. goes 
with the Cadets. They only arrived from Richmond 
night before last. 

Evening : Our fears have all been realized : the en- 
emy is upon us, and is in pursuit of McCausland, who 
left the town about an hour before they entered. About 
ten o'clock this morning, McC. burned the bridge as 
the enemy approached it ; he then began to fire upon 
them. We have been shelled in reply all day; one 
shell exploded in our orchard, a few yards beyond us, 
— our house being just in their range as they threw 
them at the retreating Confederates. The Cadets, my 
husband among them, remained on the Institute hill, 
till the shot and shell fell so thick that it was danger- 
ous ; the Cadets then retreated, and are several hours 
ahead ; but they are infantry, and this is a cavalry force 
altogether. Mr. P. is just two hours ahead of them. 
The people from the lower part of the town fled from 
their dwellings, and our house was filled with women 
and children. Just in the midst of the thickest shelling, 
the poor wounded boy from the Institute hospital was 
carried here, surrounded by a guard of cadets. He has 
borne the removal very well. I have distributed some 
of J.'s blackberry-wine, which I have always forborne to 
open, among the frightened and almost fainting ladies. 
About four o'clock the head of the Yankee column came 
in sight. I went out and watched them approach ; saw 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 189 

six of our pickets run ahead of them some ten minutes. 
One of them dropped his gun near our door. For two 
hours there was one continuous stream of cavalry, rid- 
ing at a fast trot, and several abreast, passing out at the 
top of town. Then the infantry began to pour in : these 
remained behind, and with cavalry who came in after, 
flooded the town. They began to pour into our yard 
and kitchen. I ordered them out of the kitchen, half 
a dozen at a time, and hesitated not to speak in the 
most firm and commanding tone to them. At first they 
were content to receive bacon, two slices apiece ; but 
they soon became insolent ; demanded the smokehouse 
key, and told me they would break the door unless I 
opened it. I protested against their pillage, and with 
a score of them surrounding me, with guns in their 
hands, proceeded to the smokehouse and threw it open : 
entreating them at the same time, by the respect they 
had for their wives, mothers, and sisters, to leave me a 
little meat. They heeded me no more than wild beasts 
would have done ; swore at me ; and left me not one 
piece. Some rushed down the cellar steps, seized the 
newly churned butter there, and made off. I succeeded 
in keeping them out of the house. We have had no 
dinner ; managed to procure a little supper ; we have 
nailed up all the windows. I wrote a polite note to Gen. 
Averill, asking for a guard ; none was sent. At ten we 
went to bed, feeling that we had nothing between these 
ravagers and us but God's protecting arm. 

Sunday Morning, June 12th ; A day I will never 
forget. I slept undisturbed during the night, but was 
called down stairs early this morning by the servants, 
who told me the throng of soldiers could not be kept 
out of the house. I went down and appealed to them 
as a lone woman who had nobody to protect her. 



190 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

might as well have appealed to the bricks. I had left 
the smokehouse door open, to let them see that every 
piece of meat was taken (I had some hid under the 
porch, which as yet they have not found). They came 
into the dining-room, and began to carry away the china, 
when a young fellow from Philadelphia (he said) took 
the dishes from them, and made them come out. I 
told them all I was a Northern woman, but confessed 
that I was ashamed of my Northern lineage when I saw 
them come on such an errand. They demanded to be let 
into the cellar, and one fellow threatened me with the 
burning of the house if I did not give them just what 
they demanded. I said, " Yes, we are at your mercy 
— burn it down — but I won't give you the key." They 
then demanded arms ; we got the old shot guns and 
gave them ; these they broke up, and left parts of them 
in the yard ; broke into the cellar ; carried off a firkin 
of lard hidden there ; a keg of molasses, and whatever 
they could find ; but did not get the bacon. They asked 
me if we had no more than this : I answered " Yes, but 
it is in the mountains." Sent to Gen. Crooke for a 
guard. At last they pressed into the house, and two 
began to search my dressing room. What they took 
I don't know. They seized our breakfast, and even 
snatched the toasted bread and egg that had been 
begged for the sick man's breakfast. My children were 
crying for something to eat ; I had nothing to give 
them but crackers. They set fire to the Institute 
about nine o'clock ; the flames are now enveloping it ; 
the towers have fallen ; the arsenal is exploding as I 
write. Governor Letcher's house has been burned down, 
and they told me that all the V. M. I. professors' 
houses were to be burned, Col. Preston's among them. 
At last old Dr. McClung came, and Phoebe asked 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 191 

him to go to Averill's Head Quarters with her (Averill 
has his Head Quarters in Dr. White's yard) ; she went ; 
did not see the General, but found a young man there 
(from Philadelphia !) who came back with her and or- 
dered the men off. By and by an officer came, and 
asked for me ; told me he had heard we were annoyed ; 
said he was mortified, and would send a guard, though 
he had no authority to do so. . . . Let me note here, 
and I do it with chagrin and shame, that the only really 
civil men have been those from Western Virginia and 
these two Philadelphians. Invariably those from Vir- 
ginia were polite ; one offered silver for some bread ; 
I had nothing but crackers, which I gave him, remark- 
ing that he was on the wrong side for a Virginian. He 
looked decidedly ashamed. 

It was twelve o'clock before we could get any break- 
fast. They carried off the coffee pot and every thing 
they could lay their hands on, and while the guard, a 
boy of 17, was walking around the house, emptied the 
corn-crib. I asked Dr. P. to take the library for his 
medical stores, which he agreed to do ; he was really 
polite. We asked him if they were going to burn our 
house ; he said " not if it is private property." Gen. 
Hunter has ordered the burning of all the V. M. I. pro- 
fessors' houses. Mrs. Smith plead for hers to be spared, 
on account of her daughter, who lies there desperately 
ill ; that alone saved it. Hunter has his Head Quarters 
in it. This has been an awful day, and it may be worse 
before night. One cavalryman told me that if they all 
talked as I did, they would fire the entire town. 

12 o'Clock: We have just heard that Gen. Smith, 
Col. Williamson, and Col. Gilham with some of the Ca- 
dets have been taken prisoners! Where is my hus- 
band ? Where is Fra^nk ? If our house is burned to- 



192 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

night, and we hear of my husband being captured or 
killed, what will life be worth ? God protect and have 
mercy upon us all ! To whom can we look but Thee ! 

Three 0? Clock p. m. ... I am in despair ! Forty 
thousand troops are marching upon Richmond through 
here ; eight thousand more left in Staunton, as an intel- 
ligent guard told us. Richmond must fall — how can 
it withstand such numbers ! 

I am astonished that in the midst of our frightful 
troubles we are enabled to be so calm. How awful is 
war ! "Who would think this was Sunday, and our in- 
tended Communion ! One of our overseers has just come 
into town, and has told one of our servants that every 
sheep has been slaughtered, every cow, and the horses 
carried off. We are ruined, nearly ; if this house is 
burned, then all is gone but the bare land. I continue 
to scratch down a line now and then, to occupy myself. 
I do it too, that my father and friends in the North may 
know — if ever I can send them these notes — some- 
thing of what I am passing through. 

Monday Morning, June 13th : I had a calm, solemn, 
two-hours conversation yesterday, with an intelligent 
and seemingly Christian man, which has filled me with 
entire despair for the Confederacy. He listened to my 
solemn declarations that I knew the spirit which ani- 
mated every man, woman, and child was a martyr spirit ; 
was a conscientious belief that in the sight of heaven 
they were doing their holiest duty ; that there was a 
deadly earnestness among our men which would make 
the last remnant of them fly to our mountain fastnesses 
and fight like tigers till the last inch of ground was taken 
from them : that then the women and children would 
be swept into the Ocean on one side, and into the wilds 
of Mexico on the other, but there could be no yielding. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 193 

" If," said he, after listening with deep interest to what 
I had been saying, " if I believed that your spirit ani- 
mated your army, I would feel obliged to lay down this 
sword ; I could not fight against men who fought for 
conscience' sake." " I beseech you, sir," I said, " to be- 
lieve it ; for it is as true as that the heavens are above 
us." This is the sentiment expressed by the best of 
them. He took from his pocket-book some leaves which 
he had gathered from Jackson's grave, which he said he 
would keep as sacred mementos. One of the guard 
which he sent us, decent fellows, who have kept us from 
being insulted, asked me for some trifle that had be- 
longed to Jackson, saying, " We think as much of him 
as you do." I gave them each an autograph. 

We were told the house was to be searched for arms 
as some of our neighbors' have been. I delivered up 
all the sporting guns, but forgot that I had hidden 
Jackson's sword in a dark loft above the portico. At 
one o'clock last night I crept up there as stealthily as a 
burglar, and brought it down, intending to deliver it up 
to this Lt. B. ; but on running up the back way to Dr. 
White's gate, and consulting him, he said he had his 
old sword, which had never been in the service, and ad- 
vised me to keep it as long as I could. I have hidden 
it in Aoina Jackson's piano. We hear that we are to be 
searched this morning ; almost every house in town has 
been, and but for the interest this Lt. has taken in us, 
I believe we should have been too. 

Gen. Smith's house has not been burned ; they have 
not yet discovered our wounded man. Oh! I am so 
exhausted — so heart and soul weary ! We have heard 
many times this morning that the Cadets have been cap- 
tured. Lynchburg no doubt has fallen, for there was 
no force there. The servants are flocking away. The 



194: MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

soldiers almost force them into the omnibuses. We have 
a young girl here now, our Mary's sister, whom they 
were about to drag away ; Mary went and brought her 
here for safe keeping. 

Tuesday Morning, June l&th : Have had many ex- 
periences since yesterday morning. Our guard has been 
very kind, and we have done everything for them as if 
they were our own men, because we feel that our safety 
rests with them. Yesterday the best one came and said, 
"An officer has just been at the gate, demanding to 
know if this house has been searched ; I told him it had 
been ; has it ? " Phoebe said " No." He said the offi- 
cer asked if there were not anything suspicious about us ; 
the guard assured him there was not. " Now," said he, 
"you must assure me there is nothing contraband in 
your house, or I may compromise myself greatly by 
what I have done." We told him of the cadets who had 
left their trunks here ; he said they must be examined, 
but that it would not do to send them at this late hour 
down to the Provost Marshal, after he had pledged him- 
self that the house had been searched. He evidently 
was nonplussed, and so were we. He begged us to be 
in haste and have the trunks opened. We furnished a 
hatchet ; he hewed them open, and there were the uni- 
forms ! He said they must be destroyed somehow, and 
that we had better burn them. We kindled a big fire in 
the ironing room, and piled it up with nice cloth clothes ; 
but the smell of the burning cloth went all over the house, 
and the guard said we would be betrayed. Then, in our 
alarm, we poured water on the charred clothes, and by 
his directions, tore them to pieces. I suppose what we 
destroyed had cost two thousand dollars. Oh ! what a 
consternation seized us as the guards bade us hurry. 
We were in despair about concealing the remnants, but 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 195 

he bade us shun concealment ; to leave the remnants 
out upon the floor, and tell the officers, if they should 
come, that we had been searched, and he would confirm 
what we said. " All this is out of order," he said, " but 
I want to keep your house from being plundered, which 
it certainly will be if they find all these clothes." Such 
a pile as they amounted to ! We were frightened at it ; 
so I crept into the loft above the porch, and stowed 
away under the rafters quantities of the rags. We tore 
to strips all Frank's outside clothes, and how my heart 
did revolt at it, and my fingers refuse to do their office : 
we cut up Mr. P.'s new coat, which he had just gotten 
at a cost of something like $300. We were afraid to 
let the guard know what an amount of uniform there 
was, lest he should think we were deceiving him. These 
officers and cadets (there were seven trunks besides 
Frank's and Mr. P.'s) had just sent their trunks here 
by the V. M. I. servants, and we did not know some of 
the young men even by name or sight. Just as I was 
descending from the loft, candle in hand, the guard's 
head appeared above the stairs ! One of the servants 
had just time to wave me back, and then I crouched at 
the open trap door, the guard talking a few feet from 
me ; I expecting every instant that he would advance 
and put his head up to see if there was anything sus- 
picious up there. I never was placed in such circum- 
stances of danger in my life. I called on God to aid 
me. After a little, the guard turned away, having or- 
dered the buttons all to be given to him. Such a relief 
as I experienced ! After coming down, I found another 
cadet's suit, which had never been worn, of nice English 
cloth, which in Confederate money would have cost 
$500. — I took a penknife and slit it to pieces, and 
added it to the pile. * Going out into the passage I en- 



196 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

countered the guard coming down from the third story 
where the clothes lay, with a pair of new shoes in his 
hand ; he said his comrade had an old pair on, and he 
might as well take this cadet's, as they were contraband. 
He took Frank's cap, vest, and pants, and this morning 
the other fellow rode away with them on. I had be- 
come so alarmed that I thought it time he should know 
the wounded man was here, so I said, " Come in and 
see this wounded cadet ! " He seemed surprised, but 
came in, and talked very civilly ; the cadet lay pale 
and motionless, never opening his eyes. The guard 
asked if we did not need help in sitting up with him at 
night, and talked so kindly that quiet tears began to 
steal down the poor wounded boy's face — for he is 
only seventeen. Phoebe began to weep too ; the guard 
looked on a moment, and then said, " Well, in the other 
world there will surely be somebody made to suffer for 
all this ! " I take time to note this ; it is an incident 
worth preserving. 

There was still Jackson's sword. With great trouble 
we carried it under our clothes — that sword that had 
flashed victoriously over many a battle field — and 
finally concealed it in an outhouse. Then breathing freely 
for the first time since our fright, we went to the guard 
and told him there was not to our knowledge, and we 
were willing to take our oath upon it, an article of con- 
traband clothing, or an instrument of defence in the 
house. He said he was perfectly satisfied, and nobody 
should enter the house to search, except over him. 

Thursday, June l§th: As after a storm has passed, 
we go out and look abroad to see the extent of the 
damage done, so now, having been swept with the 
besom of destruction, we look around, as soon as the 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 197 

calm has come, and try to collect our scattered rem- 
nants of property, and see whether we have anything to 
live on. 

On Tuesday morning our guard left in a great hurry, 
though not before I had delivered a letter to one of 
them to carry to J., which he pledged himself to take 
care of. The town began gradually to be cleared, and 
though we did not know under what rule we were to be 
considered, we crept out to try to hear something. The 
experience of our neighbors has been in some instances 
worse, in some better than ours ; but all have suffered. 
Some idea of our absorption of thought may be imagined, 
when I record that since last Friday till yesterday, we 
actually forgot to have any dinner gotten ; we forgot 
to eat ; four days we went from morning till dark with- 
out food. 

June 17th : This morning as we sat at breakfast, we 
got news that Mr. P. was coming, and oh ! with what 
joy we soon received him ! Thank God for his deliver- 
ance ! Two days ago I thought it a very possible thing 
that we might never meet in this world, and now he is 
here safe. Surely our prayers have been heard, and 
we have been blessed beyond all we dared to hope. 

Our spirits begin to rise already, and we cease to feel 
subjugated, as we surely did two days ago. I thought 
the cause of the Confederacy was finished for the 
present, or at least that it was a hopeless struggle. I 
feel differently now. As to losses, Mr. P. says that 
$30,000 would scarcely cover what he has lost by this 
invasion. He is a poor man now for the rest of his 
days, he says ; but he bears it with a brave and Chris- 
tian spirit, and utters no complaint. 



198 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Mrs. Preston continued to make entries in her 
journal until the fall of the Confederacy ; but it 
seems hardly worth while to offer any further ex- 
tracts of this record of a time that was growing 
steadily more gloomy and hopeless. Means of 
subsistence became narrower and narrower. Dis- 
asters thickened ; starvation for the whole country 
threatened ; and the only gleam of brightness that 
lights up these last pages is the cheerful courage 
of the soldiers in the field and of the suffering 
people at home, and the entire readiness of both 
to keep up the fight, as long as " Mars Kobert," 
the Confederacy's idol, stood at their head. 

So far these journals have concerned themselves 
mostly with war records ; but we come now upon 
a brief notice or two of the only literary work — 
except a few passionate war poems — which Mrs. 
Preston seems to have undertaken during those 
years of anguish and excitement. 

The estimate of Mrs. Preston's work as a 
writer of prose and poetry, is, fortunately for our 
readers, to be made on another page, by one in 
whose literary judgment Mrs. Preston had the 
greatest confidence -, one who, though belonging 
to a younger generation, was for more than twenty 
years a valued friend, and for part of that time a 
neighbor as well, — Professor James A. Harrison, 
now of the University of Virginia. 

But there is one poem so unique in its form 
and its history that the poet's biographer cannot 
choose but tell the story of how it came to be ; 
this is " Beechenbrook, a Khyme of the War," the 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 199 

poem by which Mrs. Preston is best known in the 
South, and which won for her the love and grati- 
tude of many readers whose ears were dull to the 
higher strains of her art. 

The winter of 1864-65 (that dreariest winter 
of the century !) Col. Preston spent in Richmond, 
with the corps of Cadets, who were quartered in 
the State almshouse, their own beautiful barracks 
at Lexington having been burned by Hunter, as 
described in the war journal. 

One dark winter day, the mail brought Mrs. 
Preston a letter from her husband, in which he 
said, " I send you a little poem which is making a 
great stir here in Richmond : it is rather a pretty 
thing, but you could do something much better in 
the same line." 

The booklet accompanying the letter was " Wee 
Davie," a pathetic little story, told in very ordi- 
nary rhyme, and having no merit as a work of art. 
" You could do something better " Mrs. Preston 
accepted as a sort of dare, and she at once took up 
the gauntlet, though in absolute secrecy, except as 
regards her stepdaughter, a girl of sixteen, who 
was, in a way, her amanuensis. 

Naturally the stirring scenes through which she 
had been passing suggested the theme for this 
poem, and no imagination was necessary to form 
the tragic plot. The story of Douglas and Alice 
was the story of thousands of lives in the Con- 
federacy, and Mrs. Preston's picture of the envi- 
ronment, the scenes, the emotions, the sorrows of 
the war is so true* to life that no ex-Confederate 



200 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

can read " Beechenbrook " to-day without reopen- 
ing those old wounds. Some of us cannot read it 
at all ! 

It was written on the rough paper made in the 
Confederacy, with a poor pencil, and the original 
manuscript is almost illegible. Many pages were 
written by firelight, partly for the secrecy of it, 
but partly because even the home-made tallow 
candles must be used with economy. To the girl 
amanuensis it was a time of eager delight, those 
evenings when she lay on the rug in the fire-glow, 
waiting for the words which came from a shaded 
corner, and which wove themselves into the smooth 
and yet animated verse. Many a tear had to be 
choked back, as the poet touched chords which 
woke sobbing memories even in that young heart. 

Mrs. Preston's household that winter consisted 
of her two stepdaughters, a stepson of twelve, her 
own two little boys of six and four, and a young 
disabled cavalryman whose Winchester home was 
within Federal lines, and who could not therefore 
be nursed and cared for by his own family. This 
soldier was the late John J. Williams, at the time 
of his death mayor of Winchester and Grand 
Commander of the Confederate Camp of Veterans 
of Virginia. (He is the second friend whose help 
in these reminiscences has been snatched away by 
death, since the opening chapter was written !) 

Young Williams had been a member of the 
Kockbridge Artillery at the time that Mrs. Pres- 
ton's stepson Frank was wounded at the battle of 
Winchester, and as soon as the Confederates turned 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 201 

back from pursuing the flying Banks, John Wil- 
liams took his wounded comrade to his father's 
house. That house was already full of wounded 
Confederates ; there was not a vacant bed. But 
Mrs. Williams' heart was as big as the Confeder- 
acy. " He shall have a bed made up in my par- 
lor," she said at once, and it was in her parlor 
that the brave boy suffered the anguish of having 
his arm amputated ; in her parlor that the noble 
woman nursed him back to life. 

Judge if the Lexington household did not count 
itself happy, that last winter of the war, in hav- 
ing John Williams to nurse and honor and make 
much of ! But it was Mr. Williams's connection 
with " Beechenbrook " that allows me the gratifica- 
tion of naming him here. 

Mrs. Preston's youngest child had a wonder- 
fully quick ear and memory for rhyme, and was 
constantly catching up and repeating snatches of 
verse. During the dictation of parts of " Beechen- 
brook " (for it was not all composed in the fire- 
light) the child learned many couplets by heart, 
and to his mother's chagrin would shout them 
over the house. His baby lingo, however, was 
so imperfect that no attention would have been 
attracted to the composer's secret, except for this 
singular coincidence : Mrs. Preston had, entirely 
by chance, selected for her hero the surname of 
Dunbar, which happened to be the maiden name 
of Mr. Williams's mother ; and when the little 
raconteur went about his games shouting this 
couplet, — 



202 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

" If I 'm wounded or captured or killed in the war, 
'T will matter to nobody, Colonel Dunbar," 

the visitor's attention was attracted at once. 
" What is this child saying about Colonel Dun- 
bar ? " he asked, and kept on asking, until he ran 
the secret down, and unearthed it. But by that 
time the last touches were being put to the poem. 

Mrs. Preston sent the manuscript to her hus- 
band, in Richmond, and received in return ex- 
travagant and delighted praise. Colonel Preston 
gathered group after group of officers about him, 
and read them " Beechenbrook " from beginning 
to end ; never failing to win the tribute of tears 
from the sternest of them. He used to tell, with 
amused zest, how these bearded fellows protested 
against the death of Douglas, and insisted upon 
another denouement for the book ! 

It was published at once, on coarse and rather 
dark paper, with paper backs : the journal records 
that Colonel Preston paid $2600 of Confederate 
money for an edition of two thousand copies ; 
about fifty of these had been sent out of Richmond 
when the end of the world — our world — came : 
the publishing house was burned at the evacua- 
tion of Richmond, and the entire edition was de- 
stroyed ! 

Mrs. Preston's diary of that last winter of the 
war mentions " Beechenbrook " only two or three 
times, and then speaks slightingly of it. 

Have been employing my night hours for some time 
past weaving a little ballad story, "A Rhyme of the 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 203 

"War." My eyes are so weak, and give me so much 
pain, that I write without a candle, merely hy the light 
of the fire, and without looking at my page. It has 
served to lighten the time of my husband's absence, 
which otherwise oppresses me with its weariness, espe- 
cially the long evenings alone at my fireside. I have 
simply tried to present a true picture of these war-times 
in which we live. 

A letter from my darling husband, expressing extrava- 
gant praise of my little poetical story. It delights him, 
and that is enough for me. He is going to have it pub- 
lished. 

Had four letters from my dearest husband to-day; 
have had none before since last Thursday. He has put 
my " Rhyme " into the printers' hands, to be gotten up 
in the plainest manner — dark paper — dim type — a 
small do. tract ; and he is to pay $2600 for 2000 copies, 
in stitched brown paper covers ! A commentary upon 
our condition. 

The last one of the war letters may be given 
here, as it belongs to the dying hours of the Con- 
federacy. It is from the absent husband. Colonel 
Preston remained with Jackson until February, 
1862, when he was recalled by the Board of Vis- 
itors to his place at the Virginia Military Institute. 
For two years and a half the wife had the com- 
fort of her husband's presence in Lexington. Dur- 
ing that time, as has been seen in the war journal, 
one son of the household was slain in battle ; one 
died while preparing for the army; another lost 
an arm. The father's head had whitened under 



204 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

these sorrows, and he had lost the buoyancy to 
which his perfect health and undiminished vigor 
still entitled him. But his Christian resignation 
was perfect, and his duty to his family, to his 
church, and to his suffering country filled his life. 
The following letter was written during the win- 
ter of 1865, spent in Richmond with the corps of 
Cadets, who were quartered at the State alms- 
house, as has been told in a former chapter. 

Richmond, Tuesday, January 24th, 1865. 

You will get this by General Smith. He goes up to 
rest, leaving me to discharge his duties as well as my own 
as professor. I will not underrate the laborious nature 
of the work, as I mean to make it the foundation of a 
claim for furlough when he gets back ! 

I send you as the principal item, Thackeray's last novel, 
" Philip." Remember when you read it to return your 
thanks for it to Colonel Crutchfield. I have read it with 
much satisfaction. As a story it is a mere framework, 
hastily and inartistically run up, and scarce aims to ex- 
cite much interest by the events. It is a book of char- 
acters, and of characters by no means perfect. In fact 
there is but one actor introduced (Mrs. Pendennis) who 
does not require the veil of charity to conceal very con- 
siderable flaws. The staple of the book is a merciless 
exhibition of the badness of human nature. D. and the 
preacher Hunt are two of the most unmitigated evil- 
doers on the records of fiction. Other characters you 
will find in the book that are strong types of bad men, 
each in his peculiar line, but the analysis will bring out 
from all the root evil of supreme selfishness. The phi- 
losophy of his book is to make selfishness odious, or at 
all events, in a cynical way, to show how prevalent it is. 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 205 

His female characters are not quite as bad as his men, 
but they are hard cases indeed. I have not time to in- 
dividualize. But you will relish, I know, the picture 
of true married love in Pendennis and his wife. It is 
so exquisite and so natural and of course so true. And 
what art there is in the way in which he just opens the 
gates of Eden for us as we stand outside, not permitting 
us to enter, and not describing its beauties, but only 
allowing us to get a view along one vista of the trees in 
the heavenly garden, to hear one song of the birds of 
Paradise, to inhale the perfume wafted to the gate from 
the banks of ever blooming flowers, and to see at a dis- 
tance Adam and Eve in loving talk and quiet bliss ! 
And then the gates close upon our eager eyes, to be 
opened again when we do not expect it, and to furnish 
some other scene, differing in features, but the same in 
entrancing loveliness. I have hardly ever met with any- 
thing more charming than this fragmentary vision of 
perfect wifehood. The author gives us different colored 
bits of glory, and says to our imagination, " Put them 
together, and see what they will make." 

Somebody has undertaken to restore the lost books of 
Livy, by his profound and minute acquaintance with 
history : I think if we were together, we know enough 
about the subject matter of Mrs. Pendennis' story, to 
fill up the gaps in it! The story falls off decidedly at 
the end, and the denouement is as manifest, common- 
place, and clap-trap as ever a lazy man of genius was 
guilty of. But take it altogether, it is so sharp and 
witty, and, from its standpoint, so true, that I enjoyed 
it amazingly. How much better it would have been if 
Phebe had read it aloud to us, so that we could have ex- 
changed criticisms ! By the time I see you I will have 
forgotten all about it.* Indeed it would cost me some 



206 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

trouble to recall its particulars even now. But at all 
events, I have had my talk with you about it. 

Item second is a pair of rubber shoes. I don't think 
Cinderella's foot can get into them, but they are the 
only pair I have been able to find, and maybe they will 
answer. If they are too small, write me word ; you can 
give them away, or sell them. I gave $30. for them. 
Perhaps by further search I may pick up another pair. 

Also, a ream of paper for you, like this I am writing 
on. It will try your eyes less than that you have been 
writing on. As it is much better than what we get 
ordinarily, you had better send to Captain Polk and get 
some of a larger size for the use of the household. . . . 

Also, a piece of stuff for Phebe which Sister gave me 
at Oakland ; this is the first opportunity I have had to 
send it. 

Also, one orange. Some lady gave this ostentatious 
piece of blockade goods to Frank, and he (after eating 
another, I believe), brought this to me two weeks ago. 
Of course I was not child enough to eat it, but saved it 
for you all. 

Also, a number of illustrated papers for G. and H. — 
Bless their hearts — I wish I had something better to 
send them ! 

There now is my invoice. Very small, but it is my 
little all, and represents more love than many a bride's 
trousseau, or rich man's legacy. I wish I could have 
procured something for all the household, but it is im- 
possible. You have no idea how meagre all the shops 
look, and how absolutely unesthetic in things great and 
small the metropolis is. Absolutely, there is nothing 
grand about here but General Lee, and nothing beauti- 
ful but the music at the Monumental Church. (Dinner 
Drum ! ) 



THE WAR JOURNAL CONCLUDED 207 

Postscript item : Since dinner has come in another 
important addition ; this time for Johnny — a bridle ! 
A regular army bridle, from the Ordnance Department. 
I give this to him upon condition that he puts mine away, 
and keeps it safe until I get back. Mind, he must not 
lose anything about it, not even a hit I Poor pun, but 
like my presents, the best I can make in these Con- 
federate times. 

. And now good-bye to you all. I send no news, 
though there are a great many rumors on the street to- 
day. You will see them all in the papers before this 
reaches you. 

Your Husband. 

Not many weeks after this pathetic letter, which 
reveals so naively the poverty and sadness of the 
times, under the exile's attempted gayety, Col. Pres- 
ton came home on the expected furlough. A spell 
of illness delayed his return to Richmond, and he 
was still at home when the news of Appomattox 
fell like a thunderbolt upon the little town of 
Lexington. For the great captain had held out 
until his brave men were too faint with hunger 
to march or fight, and then the end came. Mrs. 
Preston records the event with a few words of 
poignant anguish : — 

April 10th, 1865 : News has come that Lee's army 
has surrendered ! We are struck dumb with astonish- 
ment ! Why then all these four years of suffering — 
of separations — of horror — of blood — of havoc — of 
awful bereavement ! Why these ruined homes — these 
broken family circles — these scenes of terror that must 
scathe the brain of those who witnessed them till their 



208 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

dying day ! Why is our dear Willy in his uncoffined 
grave ? Why poor Frank to go through life with one 
arm ? Is it wholly and forever in vain ? God only 
knows ! 

For three months after the surrender, these notes 
were kept up in a fragmentary way ; but the story 
of reconstruction has no place here. A brilliant 
Southern orator voiced the sentiment of his people 
when he said, " And after war came reconstruction 
— as after death the judgment ! " 

The chapters of war-times may close with the 
last page of the diary : — 

July 4:th, 1865 : The Confederacy disowns forever 
as sacred the Fourth of July. I never saw a quieter 
day. Martial law is proclaimed. 

July \§th : It seems scarcely worth while to continue 
my jottings. I have so few items to note. A week ago 
four of our servants were dismissed. Mr. P. thought 
it best to change, so he sent them away. Anakee has 
lived with him 25 years ; he was grieved to give her up, 
and she wanted to stay. Old Uncle Young manifested 
no pleasure at the idea of freedom. It is astonishing 
how little it seems to affect them ; they seem depressed 
rather than elated. 



CHAPTER IX 

POST BELLUM DAYS 

When General Lee surrendered at Appomattox, 
and the weary and exhausted and half-clad and 
half -fed men came home, the Southern people felt 
for a few weeks that life was over. But this thing 
that looked like death was only a swoon. The 
instinct of self-preservation, still more the higher 
instinct of care for wives and children, sent our 
men in a few weeks (in some instances after a 
single day's rest) to the fields to dig, or into the 
woods to hew lumber, or into whatever vocation 
offered bread and meat. 

Honest work begets hope and courage, and to 
these were added a glow of pride in the effort 
we had made for independence. It had failed. 
But we had done our best, and if the men could 
have forgotten what a splendid best it had been, 
the women of the South would have kept that 
memory alive. Our pride in the four years' record 
was finely expressed by General Toombs, in answer 
to some unwary enemy who was beginning to 
say, "The reason we whipped you, General" — 
" Whipped us ! " interrupted the ex-Confederate 
in a voice of thunder, " Whipped us ? Why, we 
simply wore ourselves out whipping you ! " 



210 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

I suppose poverty was never so honorable be- 
fore in the history of the world, as in the ex- 
Confederacy of 1865. For six months after the 
surrender, anything that had cost money was 
looked upon with suspicion. Where had that 
money come from ? Was it clean money ? For 
the true ex-Confederate had not a dollar to bless 
himself with. In this connection I may be allowed 
to tell a little story that shines like Portia's candle 
in this naughty world. Only a few weeks after 
the surrender, Mr. Samuel Shoemaker of Mary- 
land, an ardent supporter of the Union, a friend 
of Lincoln, and a man conspicuous for his anti- 
secession sentiments, was in the law office of Mr. 
Peter V. Daniel of Eichmond, on some business 
connected with the reestablishment of the Adams 
Express Company's line. While he was there, 
an old lady came in to speak to Mr. Daniel; 1 she 
was dressed (I have her word for it) in a cot- 
ton gown, grown, spun, woven, dyed, and made up 
on her own plantation ; her bonnet was woven of 
wheat straw from her own fields, dyed in the plan- 
tation pot, and scantily trimmed with ribbon that 
had served the whole term of the Confederacy. 
Her white hands were covered with cotton gloves, 
knitted by the light of blazing pine knots. She 
brought Mr. Daniel a handsome piece of old 
family silver, and asked if he could raise her 
enough money on it to take her out to Kentucky, 
where she hoped to find something left of a hand- 
some estate. 

1 Mrs. Cocke, Colonel Preston's only sister. 



POST BELLUM DAYS 211 

Mr. Daniel promised to get the amount neces- 
sary, but before the lady left his office, Mr. Shoe- 
maker had introduced himself, and with as much 
deference as if he had been seeking help, instead 
of offering it, begged Mrs. Cocke to accept a berth 
on his own line of steamers, running from Nor- 
folk to Baltimore. There could be no mistaking 
the spirit in which the offer was made, and the 
great-granddaughter of Sir John Randolph did 
not find it hard to accept such graciously offered 
kindness. But Mr. Shoemaker's kindness did not 
stop here. In Baltimore he brought his lovely wife 
and his elegant turnout, and took this Confederate 
dame, just as she had left the plantation, to drive 
in Druid Hill Park! 

Years afterward, Mrs. Shoemaker was asked 
how she felt driving among the fashionables with 
such a conspicuously dressed companion. " My 
dear," she answered rebukingly, " do you think 
we did not know her for a lady ? " Our F. F. V. 
left Baltimore with a letter to a Louisville banker, 
authorizing him to furnish Mrs. Cocke with any 
funds she might need, on Mr. Shoemaker's ac- 
count ! 

But my pen has flown the track. Peace brought 
its compensation even to the sorest hearts, in the re- 
turn of the dear exiles from danger and privation, 
and to Mrs. Preston it brought the added joy of 
again opening communication with her father and 
the other members of her family in the North. 
She was relieved to ijnd that they cherished no re- 
sentment against her, or even against her Confede- 



212 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

rate colonel. From the time that Mrs. Preston paid 
her first visit to them after the war, in the fall of 
1865, till the day of her death, no shadow ever 
came between her and those loving hearts whose 
pleasure it was to lavish affectionate kindness 
upon her. 

It is no part of this writer's task to tell the 
story of Lexington's two great schools, the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute and Washington College 
(now Washington and Lee University), which were 
left by the war, the one in blackened ruins, 
the other stripped of income and crippled in fur- 
nishings. But Mrs. Preston's whole Lexington 
life was bound up with these two educational insti- 
tutions. For thirteen years her father had served 
Washington College as president ; while the Vir- 
ginia Military Institute had been first suggested 
and then brought into being by her husband, who 
was the first professor appointed on its faculty. 
Naturally their interests formed a large part of 
her life. 

Both of these schools re-opened in the fall of 
1865, with much larger faculties and many more 
students than ever before in their history, and lit- 
tle Lexington " boomed " with the rush of seven or 
eight hundred young men through her streets. 

The great event of that period of our lives was 
the coming one summer afternoon of a rather dusty 
and tired traveler, on a gray horse, up the long 
main street of the village. His figure was erect 
and soldierly, and he rode his fine horse with an 



POST BELLUM DAYS 213 

ease and grace which are out of date now, in these 
days of the jockey lilt ; but the noble face wore a 
look of sadness so infinite, so majestic, that all 
hearts bowed before it. So the great hero of a 
Surrender came among us, making an epoch in the 
history of Lexington. 

Nearly twenty years later, Mrs. Preston pub- 
lished some reminiscences of General Lee, as she 
had learned to know him during his five years' 
presidency of Washington College. Part of this 
paper, by the " Century's " courtesy, I am allowed 
to quote in this chapter. 

It would not be easy for one who had not been in the 
midst of it, to realize the intense enthusiasm that existed 
among the Southern people, at the conclusion of the war, 
for General Lee. Throughout the four years of conflict, 
Stonewall Jackson's peculiar personality, idiosyncra- 
sies, and daring exploits inspired in the minds especially 
of the soldiers, with whom naturally he came into more 
intimate relations, an indescribable feeling of chivalrous 
devotion that bordered upon something higher than en- 
thusiasm. 

But nothing could exceed the veneration and love, the 
trust and absolute loyalty which people and soldiery 
alike manifested for General Lee. There was even an 
affectionateness (if I may be allowed the term) exist- 
ing on the part of his men to him, which is rare, even 
in the case of the most adored leader. Cromwell's Iron- 
sides would march into the breach, and die at his bid- 
ding. Washington's Continentals were content to starve 
and perish, inspired by the unselfish patriotism of their 
chief. Napoleon's Grenadiers never ceased to feel the 
electric power of his name. Wellington's troops rushed 



214 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

upon death, proud to be the sharers of their leader's 
glory. But none of these great commanders captivated 
and held the hearts of their men, as did the grand sol- 
dier who, possessing the calm dignity of Washington, 
united with a warmer heart and a far more gracious 
manner, was able to impress himself personally upon 
every one under him. 

His character was perfectly poised : none ever saw his 
equilibrium disturbed, — his blood and breeding were 
such as gave to him the highest tone as a man and a 
gentleman. His air instinctively commanded reverence, 
and yet his simplicity was of such a crystalline clearness 
that one could not choose but yield up to him all the 
fealty of one's soul. 

But it was after the war had closed, and he became 
the hero of the Lost Cause, that the affection of his 
people seemed more than ever a consecrated one. In 
the flush of success and victory, in the pride and pomp 
of action, the South gave him its fullest confidence and 
reverence. But when it saw him yield his sword, and 
bow to the inevitable fiat of war with princely nobility, 
with exalted self-respect, with undaunted endurance, and 
with the one desire to make the best of the desperate 
circumstances in which he and his people were involved, 
the whole heart of the South broke itself over him in 
love, pride, and benediction. 

The name given to General Lee universally in the 
army, "Ole Mars Robert," is an evidence of the ten- 
derness of affection with which he was regarded. And 
after defeat came, all this feeling was intensified by the 
added one of sympathy. Nowhere could he move abroad 
without being greeted with such demonstrations of love 
and interest as always touched his generous and gracious 
heart. 



POST BELLUM DAYS 215 

Living near him as I did from 1865 till his death in 
1870, I was a frequent spectator of many little instances 
and scenes which illustrate this feeling, and also serve 
to bring out the finer points of his character in a way 
that no stately biography would condescend to do. It 
may be worth while to focalize some of these side lights, 
in order to indicate some of the less known characteris- 
tics of this princely man. 

A brief period only had passed, after the surrender 
at Appomattox, when offers of homes began to be pressed 
upon him. His family being an English one, he had 
relatives in England, among titled people, who insisted 
upon his coming and sharing for a time the ease and 
luxury of their homes ; but he positively refused to ex- 
patriate himself. " No," said he, " I will never forsake 
my people in their extremity ; what they endure, I will 
endure ; and I am ready to break with them my last 
crust." And he refused to leave Virginia. Many homes 
were pressed upon him in his native State ; but as my 
sister (Mrs. E. R. Cocke) said, when he accepted her 
offer of a plantation house on her own estate, " he chose 
the most unpretending one " ! With furniture from her 
own house she fitted up for him and his family a plain 
but comfortable home at u Derwent," Powhatan County. 
And here he gathered for the first time since the war 
his own family. " Never shall I forget," she said, " his 
unaffected gratitude, and his gracious acceptance of this 
simple home I and my sons had prepared for him. The 
Derwent house was only two miles from my own, and 
our great country gardens readily supplied the wants 
of the new residents. As I saw the beautiful simpli- 
city with which these trifling supplies were received, it 
seemed impossible for me to realize that this was the 
man upon whom the fate of the South had hung — that 



216 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

this was the man for whom thousands were ready to 
rush to death — that this was the man before whom the 
hearts of all the Southern Confederacy bowed in rever- 
ence." 

" I remember " (she said) " his riding over on Trav- 
eller one day shortly after coming to Derwent, to a 
neighboring country store, which was also the postoffice : 
the desire of the people, black and white, to see Gen- 
eral Lee, was intense, for this was but a few weeks after 
the surrender. He walked quietly into the store, and 
was engaged with its proprietor in talk about the pro- 
spect of the crops, and such like things, when the room 
began to be crowded by the country people, intent upon 
catching a glimpse of the great Commander. He seemed 
not to observe them at first, but turning round, and 
noticing the press of people, he said, * Ah, Mr. Palmer, 
pardon me for keeping you talking about corn and to- 
bacco so long ; I see I am detaining you from many 
customers.' There was nothing to indicate the slightest 
consciousness that the crowd had pressed in to see him." 

I well remember the first visit paid to Mrs. Lee on 
their taking possession of the president's house at 
"Washington College, in Lexington. There were many 
visitors in the room, who had all come with a sort of 
exalted reverence to pay their respects to the General. 
When we rose to take leave, my little son, who accom- 
panied me, could not find his cap. What was my sur- 
prise to hear Mrs. Lee interrupt the General in his talk 
— not to ask him to summon a servant to do her errand, 
but to say, " Robert, Herbert Preston has left his cap 
in the back parlor ; will you go and get it for him ? " 

We were not used to hear the leader of armies bid- 
den to do such errands as that ! 

At one of the first commencements at which General 



POST BELLUM DAYS 217 

Lee presided, after he became president of the college, 
the hall was filled with an immense crowd, to whom he 
was still an object of central interest. During the pro- 
gress of the exercises, a little boy of four years old be- 
came separated from his parents, and went wandering 
up one of the aisles in search of them. The General 
noticed the child's confusion, and gaining his eye, beck- 
oned to him to come to him on the platform, where he 
sat, surrounded by many of the brilliant men of the 
Confederacy. The tender signal was irresistible to the 
child; he instantly made his way to the feet of the 
General, sat down there, and leaned his head against 
his knee, looking up in his face with child-like trust ; 
apparently thoroughly comforted. Resting thus, he fell 
asleep, with his protector's arm around him ; and when 
the time came for the General to take his part in the 
prescribed ceremonies, I recall how touched we all were 
as we saw him do it without rising from his seat, because 
to rise would have been to awaken the confiding little 
sleeper. His love for children was more remarkable 
than that of any man I ever knew. He possessed the 
royal attribute of never forgetting faces or names ; and 
not a boy in our streets ever took off his cap to salute 
him as he passed by on Traveller, or not a little girl 
curtsied to him on the sidewalk, that he did not for a 
moment check his rein, and give them an answering 
salute, invariably naming them. 

This capacity for ever after recalling a name he had 
once heard, was peculiar. One of the college professors 
told me that in riding out with him one day, they passed 
an old mill, at the door of which stood the German mil- 
ler, with the most barbarous of German names, waiting, 
with the hope of receiving a hand-shake from the Gen- 
eral, under whom he had served. His wish was grati- 



218 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

fied, and the old man was made infinitely proud and 
happy. Not long after, the professor was again pass- 
ing the mill with General Lee, when at the door the 
miller again presented himself. The professor by no 
effort of memory could recover the man's name, though 
he had been passing his mill for years; and he felt 
mortified that when the General should ask him, he 
should have to confess his total oblivion of the name. 
To his surprise, the General rode straight to the door, 

and with a cheerful, "Good morning, Mr. F ," 

shook hands cordially with the gratified old man. 

Mrs. Preston might have given an instance of 
this wonderful memory of General Lee from her 
family history. A young stepdaughter of hers who 
had spoken to General Lee only once, being then 
named to him along with other children of the 
family, was one day walking in a long column of 
girls from Miss Baldwin's Seminary, in Staunton, 
Va., when General Lee passed on the other side 
of the street. He was on his way from Washington 
to Lexington, and was just about to take the stage 
for his night ride to that place, when he saw this 
child across the street, and singling her out from 
forty-nine comrades, — who must all have looked 
very much alike to a stranger, — he crossed the 
muddy street, and calling her by name, said he 
was going to Lexington, and would be glad to take 
any message to her father and mother. The little 
maid was too much overwhelmed with the honor 
done her to remember afterwards whether she had 
said a word in reply. But we will continue Mrs. 
Preston's reminiscences : — 



POST BELLUM DAYS 219 

The General told me once of an amusing scene he en- 
countered in one of his rides, in which children played 
a part. A few miles out of Lexington, he was over- 
taken by a thunderstorm, and sought refuge in the 
house of a gentleman whom he knew. When he en- 
tered, he found that Mr. W. and his wife were absent ; 
and a group of children, girls and boys, were playing 
marbles on the parlor carpet. They all knew him, and 
started up at once to make him welcome. But the at- 
tractions of the game were too powerful for their polite- 
ness, and as the General begged them not to stop their 
playing for him, they went on with their game. In a 
little while an altercation arose. " Now, Mary," said 
Bob, " I call that cheating ; you did n't do fair." " Take 
that back," cried Tom, "you shan't say my sister 
cheats ! " " But she did," answered Bob, with sullen 
persistence, " and I '11 say it again." With that Tom 
rose in his wrath, and collared Bob ; and Mary, trying 
to separate the combatants, burst into tears, and cried 
out, " O General Lee, please don't let them fight ! " 
" My good fellows," said the General, coming up, and 
grasping each by the shoulder, "this will never do; 
there is some better way to settle it ! " But in vain he 
tried to separate the little wrestlers. " I argued," he 
said, " I remonstrated, I commanded ; but they were 
like two fierce mastiffs, and never in all my military 
service had I to own myself so absolutely defeated as 
here. I retired beaten from the field, and let the little 
fellows fight it out." 

He had the gentlest possible way of giving counsel 
and of administering rebuke. I remember hearing him 
say once, in a presence where such a testimony was 
worth more than a dozen temperance lectures, " Men 
need no stimulant; it is something I am persuaded 



220 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

they can do without. When I went into the field at the 
beginning of the war, a good lady friend of mine gave 
me two sealed bottles of superb French brandy. I car- 
ried them with me through the entire war, and when I 
met my friend again, after hostilities had closed, I gave 
her back both her bottles of brandy, with the seals un- 
broken. It may have been some comfort to know that 
I had them in case of sudden emergency ; but the mo- 
ment never came when I needed to use them." 

As a man, physically, intellectually, morally, and so- 
cially, we people of the South think his equal was never 
seen. He was a superb specimen of manly beauty, 
grace, and elegance. His military life gave no precise 
stiffness to his manner ; there was about him a stately 
dignity, a calm poise, absolute self-possession with en- 
tire absence of self-consciousness, and a beautiful con- 
sideration for all about him which made a combination 
not to be surpassed. His tall, erect figure, his fine col- 
oring, his sparkling hazel eye, his perfect white teeth 
(for he had never used tobacco), his engaging smile, his 
chivalry of bearing, the musical sweetness of his per- 
fectly true voice, were attributes never to be forgotten 
by those who had once met him. His domestic life was 
an ideally beautiful one ; his devotion to his invalid 
wife, who for many years was a martyr to gout, was 
touching to see. He would have her conveyed, himself 
on horseback at the side of her carriage, to our various 
medicinal springs in Virginia. I recall one instance in 
which he preceded her by a few days, in order that he 
might have an apparatus prepared under his skilful en- 
gineering, by means of which her invalid chair could be 
placed upon a little platform, and slowly lowered into the 
bath, in order that the descent and ascent of steps might 
be avoided. His tenderness to his children, especially 



POST BELLUM DAYS 221 

his daughters, was mingled with a delicate courtesy 
which one never sees now-a-days, a courtesy which re- 
called the preux chevalier of knightly days. He had a 
pretty way of addressing his daughters in the presence 
of other people with the prefix of " Miss," — " Where is 
my little Miss Mildred ? " he would say, on coming in 
at dusk from walk or ride ; " she is my light-bearer ; 
the house is never dark when she is in it ! " 

Several thousand people shared with Mrs. Pres- 
ton this privilege of living in the same community 
with General Lee ; not a few of these have re- 
corded their acquaintance with him ; but as we are 
presently to ask how our poet felt when she gazed 
for the first time upon Mt. Blanc, so it seems 
proper to set forth her impressions of that nobler 
piece of God's handiwork, a Christian Hero. And 
let me add as a postscript to her own record, an 
anecdote which I have heard her tell so often that 
I can repeat her very words. 

One stormy winter twilight, too bad an evening, we 
thought, for anybody to be abroad, our door-bell rang, 
and General Lee and Miss Agnes were shown into the 
library, where the family were gathered. Before many 
minutes had passed General Lee asked for my two little 
boys (six and four), by name, as he always did. He 
was told that they had been ill with croup for several 
days, and were not allowed to cross the nursery thresh- 
old. The next afternoon, in worse weather, if possible, 
than that of the day before, General Lee again rang 
our door-bell, bringing in his hand a basket of nuts for 
one little invalid, and a picture of a dog for the other ! 
" Can you conceive," Mrs. Preston would ask, with a 



222 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

dewy look in her eyes, " how one who carried on his 
heart the sorrows of a whole people, who daily received 
and answered letters from all over the South, could re- 
member my little prisoners ? " 

Lexington was full of interesting people, dur- 
ing those first years after the war. One of them 
was Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who was 
connected with the Virginia Military Institute. A 
sweet invalid wife, and several sons and daughters, 
made this warm-hearted old man a charming home 
in one of the houses built for the military pro- 
fessors, on the border of the handsome parade 
ground. (One of these daughters was so beauti- 
ful that she was asked by a well-known painter 
to sit for his picture of Guinevere !) The com- 
modore himself was full of gay bonhomie ; he was 
radiantly happy at being able once more to collect 
his family about him, and gratified by the gener- 
ous appreciation which left him free to finish his 
important geographical books, without taking up 
any regular class work. Although not the heroic 
figure in the world's eye that Lee was, or Jackson, 
Maury had, in his. own line, achieved world-wide 
fame, and when coaxed into showing his honors, 
his ex-Confederate coat would blaze with royal 
decorations. 

But, like General Lee, he lived among us with 
the simplicity and good-natured neighborliness of 
the humblest citizen, and drew all hearts to him 
by a child-like gentleness and cordiality. He was 
working very hard, with his daughters' help, over 
the books of geography that afterwards delighted 



POST BELLUM DAYS 223 

readers of all ages ; but, like General Lee again, 
he had sympathies to spare for all. 

On one occasion, when the Preston home lay- 
under the gloom of recent sorrow, the dear thought- 
ful old commodore sent a special messenger to in- 
sist that the youngest daughter should come to him 
for a week's visit. He evidently felt that the young 
thing needed cheering, and he had set himself the 
task. She regretted afterwards that she did not 
accept the kind invitation, and so learn to know 
more intimately the " great pioneer of meteoro- 
logical science." 

Mrs. Preston had become much attached to this 
rare old man ; and when he lay on his death-bed, 
in the last battle for life, prolonged through four 
months of weariness and pain, she was deeply 
moved at the daily accounts of his patience and 
courage and unwavering faith. Two incidents of 
his last days especially touched her poetic heart, 
and I recall distinctly the broken voice and tearful 
eyes with which she repeated them to me : one 
was his enjoyment, up to the last day of his life, 
of the gleaming beauty of one of the planets. 
"Draw back the curtain," he said, as his voice 
grew fainter, " and let me gaze upon him a little 
longer : I think that one of the first requests that 
I will make, after I get to heaven, will be that I 
may be permitted to visit that planet ! " 

The other incident Mrs. Preston herself gave 
to the world in one of her best known poems. 
Mrs. Maury had asked her husband if she might 
bury him in beautiful Hollywood, the Confederate 



224 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Valhalla of Kichmond, Virginia. " As you please, 
my dear," said the nature-lover, " but do not carry 
me through the Pass until the ivy and laurel are 
in bloom, and you can cover my bier with their 
beauty." And while the burial service was being 
read over the body, lying in state in the library of 
the Virginia Military Institute, Mrs. Preston, who 
was not able to venture across her threshold at the 
time, walked up and down a sunny, covered porch, 
with mind and heart aglow, and when we came 
back from the vault where the temporary resting- 
place was to be, she read us in a voice quivering 
with emotion, "Through the Pass." The whole 
poem of eleven verses had been forged out at white 
heat during that hour of solitude ! 

THROUGH THE PASS. 

" Home, — bear me home, at last," — he said, 
" And lay me where my dead are lying, 
But not while skies are overspread, 

And mournful wintry winds are sighing. 

" Wait till the royal march of Spring 

Carpets your mountain fastness over, — 
Till chattering birds are on the wing, 
And buzzing bees are in the clover. 

" Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, 
And creeping ivy flings its graces 
About the lichened rocks, and floods 
Of sunshine fill the shady places. 

" Then, when the sky, the air, the grass, 
Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender, 
Then bear me through ' The Goshen Pass ' 
Amid its flush of May-day splendor." 



POST BELLUM DAYS 225 

So will we bear him ! Human heart 
To the warm earth's drew never nearer, 

And never stooped she to impart 

Lessons to one who held them dearer. 

Stars lit new pages for him ; seas 

Kevealed the depths their waves were screening ; 
The ebbs gave up their masteries, 

The tidal flows confessed their meaning. 

Of Ocean paths the tangled clew 

He taught the nations to unravel ; 
And mapped the track where safely through 

The lightning-footed thought might travel. 

And yet unflattered by the store 

Of these supremer revelations, 
Who bowed more reverently before 

The lowliest of earth's fair creations ? 

What sage of all the ages past 

Ambered in Plutarch's limpid story, 

Upon the age he served, has cast 

A radiance touched with worthier glory ? 

His noble living for the ends 

God set him (duty underlying 
Each thought, word, action) naught transcends 

In lustre, save his nobler dying. 

Do homage, sky, and air, and grass, 
All things he cherished sweet and tender, 

As through our gorgeous mountain pass 
We bear him in the May-day splendor ! 

Twice, in the ten years that followed the war, 
death entered the home of which the stepmother 
was the centre, and the initiated find in her poems 
mementos set up like exquisitely carved stones, 
to mark these sorrpws which she shared with her 
husband. 



226 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

But Mrs. Preston's days were filled, not with 
the noble companionship of heroes, not with pam- 
pered sorrows, not even with the thrill of her crea- 
tive art; and if the story of her life teaches a 
special lesson, it is that the best entourage for such 
a singer is a home, and a family demanding con- 
stant, unselfish devotion. This is a chapter made 
up, like our grandmothers' quilts, of scraps ; and 
it will end with scraps from two little note-books 
(they do not pretend to be journals), one marked 
1868, the other 1870. 

Monday, April 6th, 1868. Copied a sonnet for Land 
We Love. Wrote to Bro. W. and had the Benton Tay- 
lors, Dr. Madison, and Mr. Massie to tea. 

Tuesday, 7th: Rainy day, raw and cold. E. read 
" On the Heights " to me this afternoon. Wrote to Mrs. 
B., an old lady of 90, who had made a donation of 
books to our black Sunday School. 

Wednesday, 8th: Put down matting in the spare 
chamber. Received the wall paper. 

Thursday, April 9th: Covering chairs with new 
damask. Rainy day. E. read "On the Heights," a 
German novel, to me for an hour or so, while I worked. 

Friday, 10th: Still renovating chairs; have fixed 
five. 

Sunday, April 12th : The old negro I went to see 
on Saturday died a short time after I was there. I 
spoke to him about Christ ; he assented, but was too 
weak to talk. I did not dream he was so near death. 

Thursday, 16th : Rain — rain ! Very busy putting 
down matting in the dining room, and getting it cleaned. 
Very thoroughly tired to-night. Can't work as I used 
to, without tiring out. No garden made. 



POST BELLUM DAYS 227 

Friday, VJth: Fine, clear day; not warm. Fruit 
generally killed, it is thought. Peach trees in bloom. 
Busy darning and sewing. 

Saturday, April ISth : Tired with this abominable 
house-cleaning. Working at it until three o'clock. A 
fine day, though too cool without fire. Men digging 
about the trees in the yard. 

Tuesday, 21st : It still rains. Sent off " The Graves 
of Tennessee " to the S. H. Journal. Read a little ; 
wrote a part of a critique of " On the Heights." Cleared 
in the evening. . . . 

Wednesday, 22d: A beautiful day; a dozen peo- 
ple invited to tea ; busy all day making cake, ices, &c, 
and chicken salad without any celery, or even cabbage ! 
Yet very good ! (mem.) 

Tuesday, 23d : Finished and sent to Gen. Hill my 
criticism of " On the Heights ; " 7 pp. letter paper. 
Went at night to hear an Englishman read Dickens' 
" Christmas Carol ; " very much entertained ; the first 
reading I ever heard. Gentlemen to tea. 

Friday, 24th : Raw, but clear. Bro. E. came up this 
morning ; took him to hear " Twelfth Night " read ; 
passably good ; though never having heard " readings," 
I 'm no judge. Eyes paining in consequence of yester- 
day's work. Digging garden vigorously — that is, the 
men are ! 

Saturday, April 25th : (Mr. P.'s birthday !) Had the 
garden generally planted to-day. Still cool and dis- 
agreeable. How ungracious a season is our American 
spring ! Gentlemen to tea. Mr. P. quite unwell. 

Monday, 21th : Mended and put down the stair carpet ; 
finished my room couch. A day of manual labor. Very 
tired. Fires still in all the rooms ; gentlemen to tea. 

Tuesday, 28th : A fair day ; covered pillow for my 



228 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

couch. More pain in my back than I have had for 
months. Wrote (lying on my back) May Queen verses 
at the request of a lady of Williamsburg ; two pieces, 
21 verses. 

Wednesday, April 29th: Rain all night; gloomy, 
sloppy day. Copied and sent off Miss C.'s verses. Let- 
ter from Mrs. Jackson ; still pain in my back ; glued 
some chairs, notwithstanding. 

Thursday, 30th : Out hunting a cook to-day ; not suc- 
cessful. Fine warm day — the first without fire all 
day. . . . 

Friday, May 1st : Lovely day ; no fire in my room 
all day. Varnished a parcel of furniture to cover up the 
wear and tear of the winter. Sewed all the afternoon 
— longer than I have done for a good while. 

Saturday, May 2d : Hard rain in the afternoon ; 
sewed half the day ; Prof. Joynes to tea ; pleasant talk 
about books : discussed " On the Heights," " Norwood," 
German life, &c. 

Monday, &th : Rain ; busy sewing. Out in the after- 
noon at Gen. Lee's and Mrs. Monroe's. 

Tuesday, 5th: Rainy till towards noon; without a 
cook. 

Thursday, 1th : Had P.'s room cleaned ; nothing but 
hard work all day. 

Friday, Sth : House-cleaning still ; varnished the hall 
oilcloth myself ! Nothing but work all day. Yester- 
day copied before breakfast 8 or 10 verses, written after 
I went to bed last night, for a May queen. Cold ; fires 
again. 

Saturday, May 9th : The record must still be work. 
No cook yet. Very cold this morning. A celebration 
of the Confederate Dead to-day, instead of May 10th ; 
decking graves, &c. 



POST BELLUM DAYS 229 

Monday, 11th : All day housecleaning ; still no cook. 
Fine day ; foliage pretty well out ; too cool to sit with- 
out fires. 

Wednesday, 13th : Rain. More than a month since I 
began housecleaning ; got two or three rooms still to 
do. Chew ! how tired I get of it ! Got an old woman 
for a cook, with a child eight years old. Eleven black 
people to cook for here to-night, and I got supper al- 
most entirely myself. 

Friday, May 15th : I make entries of the most trivial 
things that fill up my day. Years hence it may interest 
me (if I live) to know how I filled up my hours. Four 
gentlemen here to tea ; one of them remained all night. 

Tuesday, May 19th : Cold this morning. My birth- 
day! Sewing and working. Beautiful day. Wrote 
letters. 

As will be seen from the foregoing passages, 
these little note-books are mostly filled with re- 
cords of weather, records of health, and family 
records, now wholly unimportant ; also with daily 
records of company — company — company — 
which flowed through her days in a never-ending 
stream; and also with tender memories of the 
past, brought up by constantly recurring anniver- 
saries. It is evident that Mrs. Preston had no 
public in her mind when she made these records 
of trivialities. Indeed they do not give quite a fair 
picture of the brave, unselfish toiler ; for the en- 
tries were evidently made at the end of her day's 
work (almost always overwork}, and shows signs 
of bodily weariness, brain fag, and consequent de- 
pression. 



230 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Her children got no such impression of her dur- 
ing those years : she was always ready to aid their 
schemes, and to encourage their activities. But 
making all allowance for her tendency to write in 
a minor strain, it is evident that a sort of reaction 
had set in after the intense life of war-times, and 
that Mrs. Preston's sensitive spirit was saddened 
by it. It was not strange that her husband should 
have lost the buoyanpy of youth ; he was nearly 
ten years her senior, and had passed the milestone 
marked "threescore." He had lost three splen- 
did sons in the prime of young manhood ; the 
sacred hope of Southern independence, to which 
they had been sacrificed, was lost; the precious 
truth that they did not die in vain, which the 
South has now recovered, was not for him, in 
whose ears the dirge of defeat was still sounding. 
The old Confederate uttered no complaint, no 
moan, no word of unavailing regret ; but his head 
grew white, his brow furrowed, his eye sad, and 
his long silences were not broken except by grave 
and serious speech. Later this sadness was much 
lightened, and with her husband's returning cheer- 
fulness, Mrs. Preston regained a brighter tone. 

The journal for 1869 cannot be found, and the 
entries for 1870 begin late in January : but ouly 
such extracts will be given as seem to contain some 
personal revelation of character, or such touches 
of background as may throw that character into 
relief. 

Monday, January 2kth, 1870 : Copied two poems. 
I wonder if it is worth while, in the least, for me to try 



POST BELLUM DAYS 231 

to gather together these waifs and estrays of the past 
years ! They seem very indifferent to me, as I read 
them. The one I copied to-day was written more than 
twenty years ago ! 

Tuesday, 25th : Copying and revising poetry for my 
prospective book. Walked with Mr. P. in the evening. 
Read to Mr. P. one of Robertson's sermons. They are 
finely written in many respects, but not satisfying. They 
do not go deep enough to meet the appetite of Presby- 
terians ; not strong enough meat. 

Wednesday, 26th : Went to sit awhile with Mrs. Lee 
in the morning. Copied two pieces in the evening. En- 
tertained two visitors. 

Friday, 28th: Revising. Mr. P. rejects my little 
dramatic piece of Vashti. Copied Dies Irae and Stabat 
Mater. 

Saturday, 29th: Mending clothes. Dull, cloudy 
weather. Only able to copy a few verses to-day. . . . 

Monday, Slst : Not very well. A long literary call 
from Col. Johnston. Accomplished nothing about my 
writing. Col. Johnston brought me a volume of MS. 
poetry to criticise. 

Friday, February 4tth: Finished copying Michael. 
I wonder if it is worth my work ! Working as I do in 
such odd-and-end style, I wonder any of it has sense in 
it. All kinds of interruptions — housekeeping — chil- 
dren — callers, &c. And I writing just in the midst of it. 
Surely it is the pursuit of literature under pressure of 
difficulties. Sent home Keble's Life to-day. How sweet 
the impression such a life leaves on one ! 

February \§th : Hunted from among my old letters 
all I could find of my dear father's, and made some ex- 
tracts for Uncle D. X.'s life of him ; now in progress. 
Copied a piece — "The By-gone " — for my book. . . . 



232 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Received a letter from a lady in Arkansas, asking me 
to write a piece of poetry on an incident she sent me. 
I sat down, and within two hours after receiving her 
request, wrote " The Vision of the Snow." 

February 15th : Received from Roberts Bros, two 
new books : Morris' " Earthly Paradise," two parts, and 
a book by Leigh Hunt. When I turn over the leaves of 
books of poetry, I am discouraged from all thought of 
publishing my own. Now here is Morris : what a mine 
of freshness and richness ! What business have I to be 
throwing upon the current my poor weak dawdling ? . . . 

Feb, l§th : Revised in forenoon ; several visitors in 
the afternoon. Had a long delightful talk with Miss E. 
about England and English authors. 

Feb. l§th : Still — still correcting ; am nearly through 
with copying ; only two or three more pieces. I am very 
glad to have them preserved, even in this revised way, 
should I never publish them. 

Feb. 21st: Revised a little. Some of my pieces 
("Jephthah" for instance) seem quite poor to me. I 
wonder if others will see as little merit in them as I 
do! 

Feb. 28th: Over my pieces still; copied and ar- 
ranged ; I have between 70 and 80 ready, — such as 
they are. Am not at all satisfied with " Jephthah " — it 
seems to me so very tame and spiritless. No letters 
this morning ; the Misses Maury here to-day. 

March 1st: I have to-day finished my book — i. e., 
all but two or three little pieces which I can't get copies 
of. How glad I am it is done ! I got right tired. And 
how thankful I am that my eyes held out till I was 
through ! I have just sewed it together, and now I wish 
it was published ! But it has helped the winter through 
very nicely, and given zest to it. I desire to be thankf uL 



POST BELLUM DAYS 233 

March 11th : Finished reading my MSS. Surely I 
am doing my literary work differently from Sam Rogers, 
who, in connection with a friend, read over his Italy 
100 times ! Not a soul has read over mine once. I 
have read it about twice — hardly that much — at least 
not more. I will now put it up and send it to Mr. H. B. 
I have accomplished most of this writing since Novem- 
ber. Surely I have not wasted much time ! I am tired, 
tired ! Company to tea. 

March 12th : Sent off my MSS. to-day. Had a nice 
long letter from Paul H. Hayne. ... To show that 
I did something besides being literary, let me say I 
patched a pair of trousers ! 

March ISth : Wrote two letters to-day, a thing I rarely 
do on Sunday, to my nephew, who to-day I hope con- 
nects himself with the Church, and to his parents, con- 
gratulating them on so sweet a fact. The last Sunday 
letter I wrote was to Miss E. W., who died a fortnight 
ago. Sister says it was comforting to her. 

March 18th : How fast the days fly and how little I 
have accomplished in them ! Here is almost the end of 
another week. The snow has almost wholly disappeared, 
and it is milder, though still cold. I feel as if I 
was like the artist Haydon's father, who always in his 
journal noted the points of the wind, no matter what he 
neglected to say. I always note the weather ! Copied 
" The Quenched Brand " to-day, and wrote a letter or 
two. Pain in my eyes to-day and yesterday, more than 
usual. 

March 24tth : After my little housekeeping, an hour 
or so of correcting. In the afternoon, went over and 
bade General Lee good-by. He looks very badly ; is 
going to Savannah for his health. From Gen. Lee's to 
Mrs. Harris' — Mrs. Campbell's — Dr. Kirkpatrick's — 



234 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

and Dr. Pendleton's. More visits than I have made 
for many a day. 

March 31st : Rainy day. Sick with cold. Not able 
to speak above my breath. Read Robertson's life till 
my eyes ached. What mists of doubt enveloped him ! 
What a strange theology ! I can't unravel it at all. 
He was morbid about everything. Much must be put 
down to his sensitive nerves. 

April 5th: Patched this morning for G. In the 
afternoon Mr. P. read me a book of the Iliad (Bryant's 
translation), and the same book in Lord Derby's trans- 
lation, and we compared them verbally, to the advantage 
of Bryant's. Both the work of very old men ; Bryant 
74. Getting better of my cold. No word about my 
MSS. Hope they may not be lost ! 

April 6th : Still not able to go about the house much. 
Wrote to Mrs. Jackson, to Mr. Hayne, and to Major V. 
about my missing MSS. Mr. Pratt here to tea. Mr. 
Preston delivered his address on Jackson's Christian 
character, by request, before the Y. M. C. A. of Wash- 
ington College. 

April 7th: Had stair carpet taken up, and stairs 
cleaned. Mr. W. came in the afternoon and stayed to 
tea ; and till bedtime ; had a pleasant talk with him on 
literature and art. 

April 9th : Mended clothes all forenoon. Mr. P. & 
J. & G. went out duck shooting, though it has been rain- 
ing all night, and is dreary-looking. Treated myself to 
the luxury of reading almost all afternoon ; Taine's 
Rome ; how rich his picturesque style is ! A little like 
Ruskin, but more natural and real. I was amused with 
his " Pulpy Graces." He uses words with telling effect. 
The translation is so good, it reads like an original. 

April 12th: Fixed Mr. P.'s study to-day; am tired 



POST BELLUM DAYS 235 

to-night in consequence ; which proves that I am grow- 
ing old, as I can't do things which I used to do with 
impunity. Toned down Michael, which I will have to 
copy over. Shortened it wherever I could. 

April 30th: A very beautiful day; trees in full 
blossom ; the orchard lovely with bloom. Had the 
house photographed this morning. Re-wrote " The 
Daughter of the Gileadite " finally. Finished up last 
corrections ; have only the Dedication to write (com- 
pose) and the name to fix, and the index, and my book 
is ready to send to the printer — such as it is. Mr. P. 
and J. out hunting. M. W. here to dinner. Received 
three books from Roberts. 

May 16th : Beautiful weather. Wrote (impromtu) a 
Dedication for my book, and spent ever so much time 
in vain trying to find a name for it — i. e., for my 
book. " Poems " is too general, and I don't know that 
they are poems. Rode on horseback with Mr. P. in 
the afternoon, out to the farm ; a nice ride ; sun very 
hot. 

June 21st : Not very well, and in a sort of bad hu- 
mor all day — without reason ! Cutting out and fitting 
clothes for the children all forenoon. Have turned the 
dining-room servant into the kitchen for the present. 
How ungracious these servants are ! So unwilling to 
help and do their best on a pinch. Proof as usual. Miss 
Exall here to tea. She brought me a note from her 
sister in Italy, containing some flowers gathered from 
Elizabeth Browning's grave in Florence. She had asked 
her to get them for me. 

June 25th : A poor profitless week ! So little done, 
and that all in such a wrong spirit. Will it ever be 
otherwise! Shopping this morning. Corrected two 
pages of proof. Very deaf to-day. 



236 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

August 3d: The anniversary of my wedding day! 
Thirteen years ago. How fast the time flies ! Can I 
believe it so long ? What experiences I have passed 
through in this period — what scenes I have witnessed ! 
God be thanked I have my husband and children still. 
. . . Made 22 gallons of blackberry wine this morning. 
Went over in the evening to ask about Mrs. A. She is 
living — that is all. This night will probably be her 
last. Yet how little we heed the solemnity of having a 
neighbor dying so near us ! Company here all evening, 
and no mention of this deathbed. 

August 4:th : Ellie's wedding day ! Sixteen years in 
heaven ! 

August 21th : To me the event of the day is the re- 
ceiving my book, 1 beautifully printed and bound, just 
according to my wish. The dream of many years is at 
length realized, and I have now before me a collection 
of such verses as I have thought it worth while to keep. 
I am thankful — I hope, that my eyes have held out to 
let me do this work. And now — what do I wish in re- 
gard to it ? Is it to feed my ambition that I have writ- 
ten it ? Or is this my way of speaking some such tender 
truths as may take hold of and comfort some heart ? 
May this latter be the truth ! It is a matter of real 
satisfaction that I have been able to accomplish what so 
long ago I had desired, yet hardly hoped to see carried 
out. May God bless the book ! It contains many grains 
of religious truth; if He will use it to impress such 
truth, it would be better than any praise earth could be- 
stow. I know this ; I would desire to feel it. Wrote 
to Miss Exall, and Lippincott. Gen. Edwin Lee buried 
to-day. 

August 30th : Put up 23 bottles of ketchup ; that lias 
1 Old Song and New, Lippincott & Co. 



POST BELLUM DAYS 237 

been the work of my day. At prayer-meeting ; heard 
the best part of what was said ; I never hear a sentence 
of the prayers. If I go on as I have for the last six 
months, I will soon be as deaf as my poor dear mother 
was. Well ! What was good enough for her, / surely 
must not find fault with ! 

September 17 th : Went out and hunted a cook. Made 
a cake. Mended clothes. Wrote to John R. Thompson. 
Mr. P. out hunting. A very breezy day, and I in a 
tempestuous humor — O me ! 

Sept. 20th : Left Lexington with Julia, in the boat, at 
five o'clock, Mr. P. and the children coming down to the 
landing with us. Mr. P. and Phebe rode down the canal 
two miles on the tow path. A lovely evening. We sat 
on deck till late. Mr. John Miller talked very agree- 
ably, and gave me some new readings of Old Testament 
passages, with comments. The finger of autumn here 
and there upon the leaves. The carriage broke down 
with us on our way to the boat. I remarked to Julia 
that it was an ominous beginning to my journey. 

(Written later ; and I had untoward happenings all 
the time I was gone !) 

Philadelphia, October 13th : Heard to-day with great 
sorrow of Gen. Lee's death. 

Oct. Ikth : A letter from home telling me of ten of 
the household being taken down with sudden sickness I 
Am filled with alarm. Something they had eaten, they 
think ; they know not what. Most of them were better 
when Mr. P. wrote. O if I could go home at once ! If 
Sunday did not intervene ! I would go to-morrow. 

Oct. 20th : My visit to Philadelphia is over. I dare 
say if I could have foreseen the sickness and death of 
the little child of this household, and the alarm about my 
own home, I would not have come. Yet I have God's 



238 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

mercy through it all. I have had a respite from the 
wear of housekeeping ; have seen and sympathized with 
my friends ; and although I have crossed but one thresh- 
old since I came, not even returning the calls made me, 
(on account of the death just alluded to), yet I have seen 
pictures and shops and pretty things, and refreshed my 
eyes with a look at gayly dressed promenaders, and equi- 
pages, &c. Now I am just ready to start back all alone. 
I dread going by myself, but can't be content to wait 
even a day or two for company which I could have by 
waiting. I am too anxious to get home again. It is a 
dismal, rainy day, and I start at 12 to-night, to travel 
all night alone. But I trust the kind Providence that 
has kept harm from me and mine may take care of me 
and bring me safely to my beloved ones. 

Saturday, 22d : Got to Lexington without trouble 
before five o'clock this afternoon ; met Mr. P. and G. 
opposite the Institute ; they were coming on horseback 
to meet the stage, hardly expecting I could be at home 
to-day. How glad they were ! It is worth while to go 
away from home, to be so welcomed back ! Mr. P. says 
I shall never go away from him any more. All pretty 
well. 

October 23d: The churches are all heavily draped 
with black for General Lee. The whole front of the 
College and Institute are draped too. 

October 29th: After finishing morning work, went 
over to see Mrs. Lee. Found her sitting up (she has 
been quite sick for ten days). She talked tenderly and 
beautifully of the General. Said, " He was so tired ; God 
saw he had need of rest." " It was best," she said, 
" that she should bear the loneliness instead of him." 
" When she thought of the change, the release, it seemed 
selfish to grieve." 



POST BELLUM DAYS 239 

November 7th: Wrote a little poem about General 
Lee, called "Gone Forward." Began it after eleven 
o'clock, and finished it before dinner, " standing on one 
foot," as Horace says. I don't know whether it is good 
or not. Writing it made the cold perspiration break out 
over me, which is a token that I was " i' the vein." 

This " little poem about General Lee," written 
in an hour or two, " standing on one foot," may be 
given here, that the reader may judge whether or 
not our poet was " i' the vein." 



GONE FORWARD. 
1. 

Yes, " Let the tent be struck ! " Victorious morning 
Through every crevice flashes in a day 

Magnificent beyond all earth's adorning : 

The night is over ; wherefore should he stay ? 
And wherefore should our voices choke to say, 
" The General has gone forward " ? 



Life's foughten field not once beheld surrender ; 

But with superb endurance, present, past, 
Our pure Commander, lofty, simple, tender, 

Through good, through ill, held his high purpose fast, 

Wearing his armor spotless, — till at last 
Death gave the final Forward. 

3. 

All hearts grew sudden palsied : yet what said he 

Thus summoned ? — " Let the tent be struck ! " — For when 

Did call of duty fail to find him ready 
Nobly to do his work in sight of men, 
For God's and for his country's sake — and then, 
To watch, wait, or go forward ? 



240 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

4. 

We will not weep, — we dare not ! Such a story 
As his large life writes on the century's years, 

Should crowd our bosom with a flush of glory, 
That manhood's type, supremest that appears 
To-day he shows the ages. Nay, no teara 
Because he has gone forward ! 



Gone forward ? Whither ? Where the marshall'd legions, 
Christ's well-worn soldiers, from their conflicts cease ; 

Where Faith's true Red-Cross knights repose in regions 
Thick-studded with the calm, white tents of peace, — 
Thither, right joyful to accept release, 
The General has gone forward ! 

December 3d: Received from Roberts (Boston) 13 
books to-day ; that makes 15 I have gotten this week. 
Surely my little critiques amount to something ! This 
is better than making puddings, and so much more agree- 
able. 

December 9th : Busy all afternoon with putting up 
parlor stove, and fixing the iron fire-place in my room. 
A horrid dirty job ; feel like a plasterer or bricklayer. 
The fixture in my room does not do, so it will have to be 
done over again. Too tired in the afternoon to go out ; 
and in a bad humor ! 

December 15th : " Pottering " about, mending things, 
&c. "Wrote to Mrs. Jackson and Agnes J. Finished 
" Chastelard." It is abominable in its sensuality and 
irreligion. But Swinburne was a mere boy when he 
wrote it. A letter from John R. Thompson telling me 
of a notice in the London " Saturday Review " of " Old 
Song and New," very favorable, considering how un- 
amiable this journal usually is. 

December 20th: Got the copy of the "Saturday 



POST BELLUM DAYS 241 

(London) Review," which contains a short notice of 
"Old Song and New." Very fair, though it says I 
wrote " Greek Stories " after reading Lowell's " Rhcecus " 
and " Tales of Miletus." I have never known until to- 
night that Lowell wrote " Rhcecus," and I wrote " The 
Flight of Arethusa " before I ever heard of Lord Lyt- 
ton's book. 

Saturday, December 21st: The last entry of the 
year ! It has been a year of mercies ; no serious sick- 
ness in the household (except John's), no death, no 
calamity. Where is my gratitude ? What have I ac- 
complished ? Gone through the daily round of my 
small duties, how wearily and reluctantly and discon- 
tentedly often, and got my book out — this is about all! 
Absent one month in Philadelphia. Well, here is the 
minute record of daily doings. It may interest me or 
my children hereafter. Whatever it is, it is now closed, 
and may God forgive the year's sins and shortcomings 
— Amen ! My eyes have been better this year than 
since '63 ; my rheumatism almost entirely relieved, and 
my hearing worse than it ever has been. Do not hear 
much of general conversation, especially of the Pres- 
tons, who all whisper ! 

The future I desire to leave wholly (where it is) in 
God's hands. 

In closing this chapter, which forms a sort of 
postscript to the war journal, and seeks to gather 
up items of interest attaching to the people and 
affairs of that time, mention must be made of the 
republication of " Beechenbrook," in 1866, by 
Kelly & Piet, of Baltimore. There is nothing of 
special interest connected with this edition of the 
war poem (of wliich seven or eight thousand 



242 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

copies were sold), except the enthusiasm shown in 
a pile of old letters, found in Mrs. Preston's desk, 
written from all parts of the South, thanking her 
for voicing the sorrow and patriotism of her peo- 
ple. It is astonishing to see how many readers 
those fifty copies (which had escaped the fire) 
had had, even before the republication of 1866. 
But it had been copied over and over, by the pens 
of loving admirers, until the copies would almost 
have formed an edition. 



CHAPTER X 

LETTERS 

On one of the first days of 1868, Mrs. Preston re- 
ceived the following note from Paul H. Hayne, of 
Georgia, who was already known in the South as a 
writer of fine patriotic verse, and of nature poems, 
but who was then at the beginning of his career. 

Augusta, Ga., Dec. 31, 1867. 

My dear Madam, — For a long time past I have 
been one of the thousands in our section who read your 
poetry with sincere pleasure. 

" Jackson's Grave " is a lyric that will live, for it 
possesses true passion and noble music. And I think 
that your verses on " Poor Carlotta," issued in the mag- 
azine published by Gen. D. H. Hill, are full of rare 
pathos, and a certain fiery resonance of harmony, which, 
as Sir Philip Sidney has it, in his " Defence of Poesie," 
" stir one's heart as with the sound of a trumpet." 

Your genius and lofty patriotism have struck me so 
forcibly, that I venture thus to address you, and to 
beg that you will honor me by accepting a copy of the 
enclosed poem, just published in the Baltimore " South- 
ern Society.'' 

It is merely a fanciful piece ; a conceit from begin- 
ning to end ; but a true poet like yourself will compre- 
hend the artistic purpose at once. 

Believe me, dear madam, most respectfully and truly 
yours, Paul H. Hayne. 



244 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

In a few weeks Mrs. Preston answered this 
letter : — 

Lexington, Va., Feb. 14, 1868. 

Paul H. Hayne, Esq., Dear Sir, — Your most 
agreeable note, suggestive of the amenities that ought 
to be exchanged in the guild of letters, was received 
some time since ; but owing to severe indisposition on 
my part, I have been unable to acknowledge it, or to 
tell you what a kindling of pleasure it gave me. Your 
name is so familiar to me, and has been for years past, 
as one of the South's purest and best singers, that I feel 
as if an introduction were a very unnecessary thing ; 
having come into contact (as I have for so long) with 
you in a mental way. And here let me thank you for 
the glowing, vivid, flashing, sparkling " Fire-Pictures " 
you were so kind as to send me. I dare not trust my- 
self to begin any analysis of their many and varied 
beauties, or my paper would soon be covered. The Car- 
toons are especially rich in that incisive kind of etching, 
which in another department of art makes Retsch so 
famous. 

I owe you thanks for your pleasant words about my- 
self. By to-day's mail I despatch to your address a 
little volume ; the main poem (if such indeed it has any 
claim to be called) was dashed off at a few sittings, and 
sent to my husband during the war, merely for his 
entertainment, while kept far from me by military du- 
ties. I have not cared to take the trouble to improve 
it much beyond what it originally was, as I wrote it, in 
the dark; for my best years have been lost, through 
the extreme delicacy of my strained optic nerve ; and 
as I have never aimed to be a litterateur, beyond the 
impromptu effusions that will come unbidden, my verses 
— if they have ever made any way — have elbowed it 



LETTERS 245 

for themselves. Don't imagine me blind, however : no 
eyes could look more reliable and serviceable ; but for 
study and writing they are of very little use. And so, 
I say, I do not enter your arena, except for pastime, 
because the odds would be so against me. Pardon all 
this personality. I have no right to suppose that you 
will care to know this much about me ; but I feel as if 
I had the right, under such Miltonic circumstances, to 
disclaim all title to the name of Poet, except so far as 
I share it with Nature's other children — birds and 
flowers. Yours very truly, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

This exchange of guild courtesies was the be- 
ginning of a correspondence between the poets 
which was kept up for eighteen years, and proved 
to both of them a sweet solace on many a dark 
day. Although they never met^ Mrs. Preston and 
Paul H. Hayne became devoted friends, and every 
few weeks they wrote each other pages of affec- 
tionate intimacies, enlivened with literary gossip 
and criticism. Mr. W. H. Hayne has kindly 
placed these letters of Mrs. Preston to his father 
at my disposal, and this chapter will be devoted 
to extracts from such of these letters, and others, 
as help to tell this story of her life, outward, and 
especially inward. 

Hot Springs, Bath Co., Va., July 11, '69. 
Paul H. Hayne, Esq., Dear Sir, — I owe you an 
apology for not having acknowledged the reception of 
your charming package of MSS. before this. But when 
it reached me I was on the eve of preparation for a 
summer sojourn at the Hot Springs (my present habitat), 



246 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

and that, with the constant pressure of company, left 
me absolutely without leisure. Congratulate yourself, 
my dear sir, that you are a man, and are thus free 
from the thousand petty housewifely distractions that 
fill up the life of a wife and mother ! I smile to my- 
self, many a time, on reading the letters of literary cor- 
respondents, who seem to imagine that my days are 
devoted to literary pursuits, and that the stylus is my 
appropriate symbol : when if they could look in upon 
me, they would see company to breakfast, ditto to dine, 
ditto to tea, — they would find a row of cookery books 
adorning my store-room shelves — they would find me 
deep in the mysteries of Sally-Lund, or lemon tartlets, 
or orange-ice, or cream-sponge (your good wife will 
understand all this, if you do not !) and so my days go 
by. Pardon such a digression ; it is necessary to my 
self -justification. How I sigh for such an alfresco life 
as would content itself with water from the spring, and 
fruit from the trees, and leave one free to devote one's 
energies to the getting up of intellectual dishes, in which 
one's better nature might develop and grow strong. 
But I am not going to run a tilt, with Susan Anthony 
as my compeer, against the existing order of things. I 
scorn to see a woman, who confesses even to very posi- 
tive literary proclivities, turn with contempt from, or 
neglect the proper performance of a simple woman's 
household duties. Let them come first, by all her love 
for husband and children ; by all her self-respect ; and 
if a margin of time is left, then she may scribble that 
over, to her heart's relief. 

It is very ego-ism to write this way ; but when I can 
offer it as the daily practise of one who loves Latin and 
Greek, Poetry and Art, sweet culture, and all bookish 
atmospheres as she loves nothing else but husband, chil- 



LETTERS 247 

dren, God, and Nature, you will bear with all these tedi- 
ous explanations as to the why your MSS. were not 
sooner acknowledged. 

I am greatly indebted for your compliment in send- 
ing me these pieces, and I have read them all with ap- 
propriate zest. The Wife of Brittany has the crisp 
freshness of the Chaucerian verse. The old Poet has 
granted your wish, and folded about you " the hale, sun- 
warm atmosphere of song." If you will allow me, I 
will presume to indicate a couplet on page 5, which 
is not as fully poetic as the rest of the Canto : — 

" The knight had chosen his mansion with an eye 
At once to loneliness and privacy." 

Not that I could not pick out fifty in Morris' Earthly 
Paradise, with which to find as much fault ; but this ar- 
rested my ear, and so I speak of it. The Nest I had 
already met with and admired in Appleton's; it is a 
dainty thing. 

(The rest of the letter is missing.) 

Lexington, Va., August 25th. (69 ?) 

Mr. Paul H. Hayne, My dear Sir, — Your de- 
lightfully long and delightfully entertaining letter has 
had no ackowledgment, simply because of my over- 
whelming cares. My household of twenty fluctuates, 
but does not lessen. One party gives place to another. 
... I wonder if Mrs. Hayne envies me the 50 lb. ket- 
tles of preserves that are day by day occupying me ! 

You speak of powers of abstraction : my dear Sir, I 
have no such powers ; or at least do with utter inade- 
quacy work which has to be done, while my mind is 
held down by household exigencies. The other day, Mr. 
Brown wrote again for a promised poem for the October 
No. of The Eclecti6 (I hope you have sent him one), and 



248 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

as he had my pledged word, I was obliged, on the in- 
stant, to get up something. Having a great cake to 
compound, I devoted accordingly my forenoon to three 
items of business — ordering dinner — baking my cake 
— and writing the promised poem. Look in the Octo- 
ber No. for Albrecht Durer, and my word for it, you 
will find about it the aroma of the cake that shared my 
attention and affections with it ! 

Many thanks for Mr. Bryant's autograph letter: it 
was very kind of you to send it, and I shall treasure it 
accordingly. I must not forget to acknowledge the 
tender and true tribute to Dickens in Appleton ; the 
best of all that have appeared. 

You are good enough to enquire after my forthcoming 
volume : well, Lippincott has it in press, and will issue 
it about the middle of September. He has sent me the 
unbound sheets, and I am quite satisfied with its mechan- 
ical execution. Old Song and New is the title. I 
don't know that it is a very good one, but I had not the 
leisure to hunt for one that pleased me better. The book 
does not contain perhaps more than half of what I have 
written, but enough, no doubt those notable gentlemen 
the critics will say. I hope they will not " damn " me, 

" with the comparative respect 
Which means the absolute scorn." 

I will take pleasure in sending you one of the earliest 
copies issued. Some of my literary friends have told 
me that I ought by all means to have had it announced ; 
but I confess to feeling somewhat like an acquaintance 
of Crabbe Robinson, who became so reduced as to be 
necessitated to cry " muffins " for her living, but did it 
in so low a voice as not to attract the least attention, 
fearing to be heard, as she said. So, afraid or shy of 
being heard, I have not cried my muffins. Pardon all 



LETTERS 249 

this about my book. It really occupies so little of my 
attention and time, that I question if half the guests in 
the house are aware that I have a book forthcoming. 

This letter is no manner of an answer to your charm- 
ingly long one, but I do the best I can under the circum- 
stances, barely acknowledging yours, with the hope of 
something better hereafter. ... I may probably spend 
the fall in Philadelphia, the old home of my own 
family, and the abiding place still of my nearest kin- 
dred. Having no leisure now to speak of new books, I 
will only instance one — D. G. Rossetti's Poems. Have 
you seen them ? The Blessed Damozel is deliciously 
pre-Raphaelite. You know Rossetti is more distin- 
guished as Artist than as a poet, and is the exponent of 
the pre-Raphaelites even more than Millais or Holman 
Hunt. But I am obliged to stop for the present. Best 
regards to Mrs. Paul, and believe me sincerely your 
friend, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

Lexington, Va. Sept. 13th, '69. 
My dear Mr. Hayne, — I am in receipt of two 
charming letters from you ; the first did not fail, not- 
withstanding you give your Mercury such a character 
for unreliability. Accept my thanks for both. I was 
just about to write you in reference to a little matter 
connected with the interests of our Southern literature, 
when Mrs. T. J. Jackson became my guest; but she 
and her little daughter have this morning left me, and I 
now turn to you about this matter : Within the last 
month I have had various letters from the Editor of 
The New Eclectic about their magazine. The pro- 
prietors are somewhat disheartened in the attempt to 
maintain a distinctively Southern journal, and they have 
asked me to use whatever influence I may have among 



250 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

literary friends, writers and others, in arousing some 
truer interest in their undertaking. I promised them 
for myself contributions gratis, and newspaper squibs in 
their behalf. One of these I send you. Now I beg 
you will speak a good word for them in one of your 
Georgia papers. An extended subscription list is all 
they require to give permanency to the magazine, and 
to afford them the means of enlarging its attractions. 
If it fails, through the inertia and apathy of the South- 
ern people, then farewell to any attempt to sustain a 
magazine south of Philadelphia. The T — s have been 
men of means (they have lost heavily lately), and dur- 
ing the first year of their connection with the magazine 
sunk $5000. in endeavoring to maintain it. So you see 
they have been willing to support Southern literature at 
some little cost to themselves. The Editor says that 
the writers of the South seem apathetic. 

Our friend John R. Thompson is now literary Editor 
of Bryant's Evening Post. Just think of it ! The Post, 
as you need not to be told, has ever been the deter- 
mined opponent of Southern slavery, — Bryant being 
a very dignified, but at the same time a very uncom- 
promising Abolitionist. However . . . Mr. Thompson 
may be able to do more for the South in that position 
than elsewhere. 

What you say about rejection by publishers, editors, 
&c. is very true : it ought never to dishearten a writer 
who knows much about the history of literature as con- 
nected with publishers. Mary Russell Mitford's Our 
Village, one of the purest and most popular of English 
prose sketches, and a work the proceeds of which sup- 
ported her latter years, was refused by almost all the 
publishers in the United Kingdom, before it saw the 



LETTERS 251 

light. (I have lying on my desk as I write, a letter from 
a friend of hers, received from England a few days ago.) 
And to compare very small things with great, my poor 
little Beechenbrooh, I was assured by a Philadelphia 
publisher, would not sell beyond 500 copies ; he con- 
sented to put that much to press, no more, because he 
" could assure me it would be a losing business." It 
has reached the eighth edition. 

You speak in a very gratifying manner of the little 
ballad verses in The Riverside. They were only a 
morning's work (I always work with excessive rapidity), 
but I am glad they pleased you. My friends tell me 
that my power to move the tender emotions is the most 
decided I possess. By the way, some gentlemen of 
your State applied to me the other day for a Poem to be 
read at the Agricultural Fair to be held at Macon 
in November. A poem about stock — dairies — and 
plows ! I never was the least bucolic — nevertheless 
the verses were despatched, such as they are. You 
would be amused to see the funny themes on which 
I am requested to furnish poems. Are you thus beset ? 
Or do they think my muse the milker of the Olympian 
Kine, instead of a rider of Pegasus ? But my letter 
grows too long. I never received the missive you ad- 
dressed me at the Hot Springs ; as you wrote Hot Sul- 
phur it is not probable that it will reach me, although I 
wrote to the proprietor at the Hot about it. We have 
Cold Sulphur, but not Hot in Virginia. 

My kind regards to the " Poet's wife." Does she say 
to your friends as the Laureate's does to his, " I keep 
telling Alfred that such and such are his best poems " ? 

I am always glad to hear from you. 
"Very truly yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 



252 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

P.S. — I have lying beside me Foster's Life of Sav- 
age Landor ; have you seen it ? It seems to be a rich 
store of literary treasures. 

Your last letter gave me unfeigned pleasure from its 
length, the subjects of which it treated, and the glimpse 
of the inner domestic life of The Southern Poet — for 
I hold to it that you, above any other of our Southern 
litterateurs, deserves the name of Poet. . . . 

Do you know it gives me the sincerest pleasure to 
know that I am not called upon to put you among the 
disciples of Modern Doubt, which is after all nothing in 
the world but centennial old doubt, revivified, and dressed 
up in garb of a new cut, instead of its mummy wrap- 
pings. It amazes me to find the modern thinkers, poets, 
essayists, bringing forward these old difficulties, and ex- 
posing them to public view, as if they had not been lived 
through a thousand times long ages ago. Here we have 
Spinoza-ism revived in all its vagueness, just as if it was 
something never before heard of. I abhor this spirit of 
unbelief. It is nothing, it seems to me, but the unyield- 
ing pride of the human intellect, refusing utterly, as it 
has done from the beginning, to bow down before in- 
spiration, and receive a God it cannot wholly fathom. 
Max Miiller says that until men have thoroughly ex- 
amined the fibre and texture of the ancient religions of 
the Oriental and Occidental world, they are not capable 
of knowing what a religion they have in Christ. 

In the last New York Eclectic there is a little article 
from The Spectator on The Literature of Mode™ Doubt 
in which that Easter hymn of Arthur Clough is quoted, 

" Christ is not risen indeed, 
Christ is not risen." 

The article is unsatisfactory, inasmuch as it is too 



LETTERS 253 

brief ; but the impression it leaves on the mind is a 
painful one. / think the influence of Tennyson's hints 
of doubt (barring a few lines in In Memoriam), are 
overstated generally. Do you recall that fine passage he 
puts into King Arthur's lips just before his " Passing " ? 

" More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of — " 

There is no unbelief in this! Some critics say that 
The Holy Grail is the sympathetic wail of unbelief : I 
don't feel it so. But you perceive I am fond of these 
subjects, and am running on too long upon them. But 
I am so grieved to see the beautiful literature of our 
later years so tinged with this splendid poison. Did 
you read a magnificent utterance of Ruskin before the 
Dublin Literati — in one of that fine series, I think it 
is, which has for years you know been delivered at " St. 
Stephen's Green," called " Afternoon Lectures " ? It 
stirs one's blood to see such a man putting forth in 
that noble and manly way the tremendous truths of 
Christianity. 

And now let me ask you — for it is a question akin 
still to the one I have been harping on for the last three 
pages, — have you read Lowell's " Cathedral " ? It is a 
choice bit of verse, assuredly, very unique, very thought- 
ful, and abounding in fine isolated lines. There is a 
certain latitudinarianism I don't like ; it is a little pan- 
theistic. Yet when I come upon such a rich, full line as 

" The soul's east window of divine surprise," 
I am obliged to put down the book until I recover my 
breath! Read it. You will understand it, as people 
who don't write poetry can't. 

My husband and I have been delighting ourselves 
over a new translation of the Iliad — Bryant's. It 
reads charmingly ; seems to give us the very gist of the 



254 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

old Greek, without any of the tacked-on ornaments of 
the translator. I account for it from the fact that as 
Bryant is 74 years old, he feels that his fame is made, 
and he need add no more to it by this work. So he 
has kept himself wholly out of view, and seems simply 
intent on making the reader understand what Homer 
meant. It is curious to see two such old men — the 
very Ancients — as Lord Derby and Bryant, employing 
the last years of life in this way. Does it not appear a 
little humiliating that we in this nineteenth century are 
glad to go back for our mental stimulus and pabulum to 
the infancy of the race ? We hail Derby's and Bryant's 
Homer, Lord Lytton's Odes, Conington's Virgil, and 
dote on Morris's lovely delicious tales of the dreamy 
eld in which he strives — 

" to build a shadowy isle of bliss 
Midmost the beating of the steely sea." 

Pray, set your poetic, seer vision to work to discover 
the secret of this backward look of longing, on the part 
of the wide-awakes of this grand, living, moving century 
of ours. I don't quite comprehend it. It bespeaks dis- 
satisfaction with the present, that is certain. Is it merely 
another way for the immortal cravings within us to 
manifest themselves ? 

Many thanks for your kind wishes in regard to my 
proposed book of miscellanies. I have taken as yet no 
steps toward publication, sure anyhow that I am too 
late for anything earlier than the fall trade. But 
really the poems (if so I dare name them, for it seems 
like taking the sacred name of poetry in vain) disappoint 
and dissatisfy me so much that I doubt their worthiness 
to be clothed in the garb of print. They have been the 
mere toys of my leisure hours ; what business have I 
then to set them forth as life-work ! 



LETTERS 255 

I see you are bringing forward for the delectation 
of your readers some of old Froissart's stories. How 
much better than the "Bad-boy" experiences which 
flood our child-literature ! I hope you will continue to 
labor in so rich a mine. Greek stories, literature, &c, 
have an irresistible attraction for me. But I think it a 
most unprofitable and unattainable path to attempt. I 
wonder if you would be willing to say the very truth 
about such poems (or pieces) as the one I enclose ? You 
will not offend me in the slightest if you dare to ex- 
press all the discontent you may feel with it. If it is 
the truth, I '11 thank the friend or the critic who says, 
" You aim at subjects too ambitious — quite out of your 
reach — keep to your little ballads like * The Signal,' 
they suit your calibre best." I am sure it is wisest — 

" to be content in work 
To do the thing we can — and not presume 
To fret because it 's little." 

September 9. 
I despatched to you a day or two ago a copy of my 
book of verses — poems, yoursee, I dare not presume to 
call them. I count on your liking them ; for, from what 
your correspondence as well as your writings reveal to 
me, I know you to be genial, responsive, sympathetic, and 
tolerant. You will understand that I am dropping my 
line, bated as above, for a kind, critical reception at 
your hands ! Well do I know that you will deal with 
me in all friendliness; and when I remember that 
" faithful are the wounds of a friend," I should not — 
and I do not eschew them, if I deserve such treatment ; 
as it is not to be doubted I in many instances do. Don't 
you think my book, as coming from a Southern source, 
merits a little notice In the Southern Review ? And if 



256 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

it does, would n't it be kind in you to prepare such a 
notice (for the short review department) for the Janu- 
ary issue ? It is too late, of course, for the October No. 
I crave true, critical handling ; not the indiscriminate 
praise which means nothing : and so trained and judi- 
cious a critic as you are, will, I feel sure, award me my 
honest pros and cons. Lippincott has done his very 
best for me ; I have nothing to complain of as to me- 
chanical execution. I have only noticed one typograph- 
ical error in the book, and a few not very important 
faults of punctuation. 

You will observe I included the story of Althea's 
Brand, but took your suggestion of a deprecatory note. 
How very classic and Greek Swinburne's Atalanta in 
Calydon is ! The choruses are delicious indeed. But 
in the impromptu way in which I compose, my little 
narrative (for it is nothing more) was thrown off in a 
day's time, I think, and I know nothing of uninter- 
rupted days. But enough of my book ! Don't you see 
how I am presuming upon your friendly interest ? By 
the way, have Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Poems fallen 
into your hands yet ? They are as unique in their way 
as William Morris's are in his, and as different, in their 
exceedingly elaborate finish, as it is possible for any- 
thing to be. You know he is the father of the Pre- 
Raphaelites as an artist ; he is thoroughly Pre-Raphael- 
ite in his poetry. His work is identical, whether he use 
pen or pencil, ink or color. I see the English critics 
(some of them) go mad over his sonnets : but with your 
exquisitely pure taste, you will agree with me, that the 
perilous line which divides the sensuous and the sensuaZ 
is sometimes almost crossed. Read the Blessed Damo- 
zel. Is n't it perfectly wrought out — an absolutely com- 
plete mediaeval picture ? 



LETTERS 257 

It may not be uninteresting to have the con- 
tinuity of these extracts broken by the sound of 
another voice. Colonel Preston evidently took ad- 
vantage of his wife's absence, in the fall of 1870, 
to say a proud word or two, on his own account, 
of his household singer. 

Lexington, Va., October 8th, 1870. 

Mr. Hayne, Dear Sir, — I drop you a line to ac- 
knowledge the receipt of your very kind letter to Mrs. 
Preston, who has been for more than two weeks with 
some of her kin in Philadelphia, where she will remain 
a week or two longer. 

Upon her return, she will doubtless express in her 
own words her obligations to you for your sympathetic 
interest in her success, and your hearty encomiums upon 
her volume. 

Accept my personal thanks also, for what you have 
so handsomely said about one so dear to me. 

Laudato, a laudata — (Poeta a poeta — ) she has 
reason to be proud ! If you prepare a critique, let me 
ask you to introduce into it from your letter, the pas- 
sage in which you thread together the analogies of the 
dews, the breezes, and the rainfall. 

Since you are so kind, why may I not venture a few 
words out of a husband's heart ? Though none can be 
expected to appreciate the poems as I do. For if others, 
of better culture than myself, recognize in them the 
hand of a true artist, and catch, it may be, tones of 
sweet music that hardly reach my hebete ears, yet no 
one can share with me the delight that belongs to the 
knowledge that the poet is the true reflex of the woman. 
Her choice of subjects is but the explication of her na- 
ture. Yes, my little wife is as full of faith and rever- 



258 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

ence as ever was any daughter of Jerusalem : the Greek 
hardly excelled her in love for the beautiful : she is as 
true and trustful as Lady Hildegarde ; as simple as a 
ballad, and as intense as a sonnet. 

Of the Hebrew story, I prefer the wailing pathos of 
Ruth ; and of the Greek (though it is not the most clas- 
sic in tone), Rhodope's Sandal. Of the shorter poems, 
Attainment, Nineteen, and The Dumb Poet. Do not 
as a critic find fault with my preferences ; the first two 
picture with wonderful insight my two daughters, and 
the third is a love-blinded portrait of a husband whose 
only claim to so much as a foot square of Mount Par- 
nassus is that of " tenant by the courtesy " as the law- 
yers call it ; i. e. by right of his wife. 

What will Mrs. Hayne say to all this about one's own 
wife? Let me beg her pardon and yours, with the 
more assurance as her goodness and yours have tempted 
me from my propriety. 

With highest respect, yours truly, 

J. T. L. Preston. 

Lexington, Va., Nov. 17th, 1870. 
My dear Mr. Hayne, — I enclose you a little poem 
coaxed out of me by Mr. Hand Browne for the Decem- 
ber No. of the Eclectic. I want you to like it. The 
expression of Gen. Lee (uttered in his unconsciousness) 
seems to me more striking than anything I can now 
recall from the dying lips of a great commander. Tete 
d'armee — how weak in comparison was Napoleon's 
utterance ! And yet how wonderfully characteristic of 
the two generals! "Let the tent be struck" — obedi- 
ence to orders — readiness for the duty of advance — 
the one's; self-glory, tete d'armSe — the thought of 
the other. I hope you received a little picture I sent 



LETTERS 259 

you of the General's lying in state — if anything so 
simple may thus be termed. But engagements press, 
and I must stop at once. 

Very truly yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

I have verified the expression from the lips of Mrs. 
Lee herself. 

Feb. 6, 1871. 

To-day General Curtis Lee has been inaugurated in 
his father's place, as president of the college here. He 
is quite his father's equal, intellectually, his friends 
aver, and has the same beautiful innate modesty of 
character. The Military Institute very reluctantly gives 
him up. He is about 35 ; a handsome, noticeable man. 
The Lee family will therefore continue to reside in Lex- 
ington. Mrs. Lee is a confirmed invalid ; for ten years 
she has not walked, and I recall how mournfully one 
day last summer, the old General said to me, " Ah, Mrs. 
Preston, I am afraid — I am afraid she will never 
walk again." 

Yet a more placidly cheerful person you never saw. 
Her industry is proverbial : her hands are never empty 
of work. If there is none to be done for the household, 
she has some poor church, some appealing charity that 
keeps her fingers busy. What an example does she set 
to our too indolent young-lady-Conf ederacy ! 

Oakland, Cumberland Co., Va., 
May 27th (1871?). 
My dear Mr. Hayne, — I don't know that my equi- 
librium is sufficiently restored to warrant me in replying 
to your most agreeable letter and your most flattering 
and charming and elaborate criticism. 



260 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Old Song and New has never been so honored by 
any extended notice, and I offer you my hearty thanks 
for this gentle labor of love. It was a real piece of true 
friendship, thus to " write me up." But you must know 
I think you praise me too highly ; you give me credit 
for genius, which, allow me to say, I do not possess. I 
hardly accept DeQuincey's definition of the two words 
genius and talent, for I demur to his idea that the lat- 
ter has no relation to the moral nature. Even though 
genius represent man's total nature, as talent does not, 
why, pray, cannot talent have a moral quality as well as 
genius ? I claim to have a modicum of talent, you see, 
and don't intend to renounce my conviction that talent 
can express some vital meaning, though of a far lower 
order than genius. 

I am reminded, in reading your special dissection 
of Lady Hildegarde's Wedding, of what Turner, the 
English landscapist, said on reading Ruskin's philo- 
sophic rendering of his pictures, " He sees a deal more 
in them than I ever put there ! " Let me tell you ex- 
actly how that ballad was written, and that may stand 
for the manner of my writing when I am most success- 
ful. (Can you endure such harping on the one string 
of self ?) An editor wanted a Christmas poem. With 
no idea before my mind but that single one — a Christ- 
mas piece — and with the shortest time allowed for its 
production — I seized my pencil at ten o'clock one 
night, and almost instantly this picture, name, acces- 
sories, and all, flashed — that is the way things come to 
me — flashed upon my mental eye : at half -past eleven 
the ballad was complete, as it now stands, needing 
afterwards scarcely the alteration of a single word. 
You talk of Art : there was not in my mind the slightest 
idea of Art's requirements while I was writing it : nor 



LETTERS 261 

do I ever trammel myself with artistic rules. You may 
know how true this is when I tell you that I have 
written the last two lines of a poem first, with the posi- 
tive conviction that all between the first line and the 
last was lying perdu in my mind, just below the line of 
consciousness, as Sir William defines it, and waiting to 
be brought out by a touch. There are times when I 
cannot write at all, and I ought never to take up pen 
but when I am " i' the vein.'' Do forgive all this talk 
about myself ; I am ashamed of it, and won't transgress 
so hereafter. But you see your own genial and appre- 
ciative critique has brought this upon you. 



These letters, in which it is the biographer's pur- 
pose to let Mrs. Preston tell, as far as possible, 
her own story for the rest of her life, do not 
contain any stirring events, any connection with 
public characters, or any new departure in her 
literary work. 

She continued to write during almost all those 
years ; and some of the later poems are counted 
among her best : during that time she followed 
the publication of " Old Song and New " with 
" Cartoons/' " For Love's Sake," " Colonial Bal- 
lads," " Monographs" (a volume of travel sketches), 
a collection of child verse, and a short dialect story 
called " Aunt Dorothy." But, for biographical 
purposes, the years from 1872 to 1897 add nothing 
new to this story. The poet's life had developed, 
matured, blossomed, and borne fruit, by the time 
she entered upon her fifth decade, and although 
the consummate flower of her poetic gift continued, 



262 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

un withered, to adorn her old age, and to delight 
her friends and readers, yet there is little more 
to tell concerning it. 

A few letters from each year's correspondence 
will be chosen, to mark the passing of time, and 
to show, as far as such brief records may, what 
thoughts and interests occupied Mrs. Preston's de- 
clining years. It cannot fail to be a somewhat 
pathetic setting forth of increasing infirmities, in- 
creasing loneliness, and the sadness of an intense 
soul, conscious of not having achieved what ambi- 
tion had planned for itself. 

Many a less gifted woman enjoys a more peace- 
ful and cheerful existence than the woman poet 
whose life these pages seek to record ; and some 
of us, who were grieved by the waves and bil- 
lows that went over her dear head, were ready 
to congratulate ourselves upon mediocre gifts and 
commonplace lives, with sunnier days and more 
contented hearts. Kismet ! the Orientals say. It 
is the nearest they can come to the " Even so, 
Father," with which we bow before the will of the 
Eternal, working in our individual lives. 

And so, when the reader sometimes comes upon 
our letter-writer in tears, as it were, he will under- 
stand that these prefatory words are prompted by 
the instinct which says at such a crisis, " I beg 
pardon ! " 

There are before me as many letters to the poet 
Hayne as would make a volume; but we have 
room for only a few more extracts, enough to 
show the side Mrs. Preston turned to her friend, — 



LETTERS 263 

her ardent affection and loyalty, her generous ad- 
miration of his gifts, her sympathy in his trials, 
her jealousy for his fame. These, with certain 
letters written to other friends, will carry on the 
story of Mrs. Preston's life to the end. 

TO PAUL H. HAYNE. 

(Winter of 1871.) 

Have you been burying yourself among your books ? 
Of course you have read Gareth and Lynette ? Now 
don't you think the limpid wine has been well drawn off, 
and we are getting down (just ever so little) towards 
the lees ? Just a faint streaking of cloudiness, such as I 
saw when decanting my wine the other day, warning me 
to stop, for I was approaching the dregs. Whatever 
the critics may say, I stick to it I do not find one line 
in Gareth which pricks me to the soul — one sentence 
to stamp itself indelibly on my memory. Even the 
little broken song, quite in Tennyson's characteristic 
vein, yet falls far short of the two short lyrics in the 
Last Tournament. Ah, why must poets grow old? 
Why can't they be exempt from the bitter human lot, 
and be allowed to keep their royal youth ? It would be 
so delicious to have such poems as The Passing of 
Arthur to read, new, every month or so. 

Being sick to-day, and confined to my room, I have 
been interesting myself with the second volume of 
Dickens' Life. And what a rollicking, joyous, boyish 
kind of life it was ! Does n't the idea of strolling 
about with a company of " hammertoor " players, strike 
you as a singular occupation for a literary man, even 
granting that the object to be attained was a worthy 
one? Fancy yourself and John R. Thompson and 
your friend Dr. Ticknor and E. P. Whipple and a few 



264 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

others so engaged ! Would n't it be funny ? Don't 
you think the letters excessively egotistic ? No broad 
questions discussed — no criticism — no living interest in 
the great movements of the hour — no allusions to other 
literary men. How amazingly different from Southey's 
letters, for example ! The plots of his romances, his 
own comings and goings, his beginnings and endings, 
it seems to me this is pretty much all. And yet 
this ends in — "Westminster Abbey! You will per- 
ceive that I have no craze about Dickens ; wonderful 
in some respects as I must concede him to be. What 
a long suffering friend Foster shows himself to have 
been ! Such references, such advisings, — he evidently 
existed to help Dickens. 

Don't you like the Quaker Whittier's Quaker poem? 
It has some very tender, sweet touches in it. 

There are very few of Mrs. Preston's letters of 
the years 1872-75 that have been kept, and, for 
some unexplained reason, only those having a 
domestic and family interest. Yet those were the 
years in which her first volume of poems, " Old 
Song and New," had given her a very much wider 
circle of readers, and had brought her pleasant 
intercourse with literary celebrities. Perhaps it 
may not be uninteresting to have glimpses of 
Mrs. Preston reflected in letters written to her by 
certain interesting people. 

FROM JOHN R. THOMPSON. 

110 Madison Avenue, New York, 
20 June, 1872. 

Dear Mrs. Preston, — I have too long neglected ac- 
knowledging the receipt of your kind letter of the 23d 



LETTERS 265 

May, with the inestimable treasure of Stonewall Jack- 
son's autograph. I am always over head and ears in 
work, and the accumulations of books and MSS. that 
encumbered my desk during my absence in March and 
April, well nigh oppressed me on my return. I have 
not yet brought up the sad arrears of my correspond- 
ence, and the letters that have since reached me have 
been mostly left to answer themselves. A letter from 
you is such a blessing, however, that I never fail to re- 
proach myself for delaying the expression of my thanks 
for it. 

"We all owe you much this week, for your lovely poem 
of Mona Lisa, in LippincotVs Magazine for July, 
which I had the satisfaction of transferring to the 
columns of the Evening Post, before any other paper in 
New York had a chance to reproduce it. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to put words in the mouth of Leonardo 
da Vinci that shall seem natural, and at the same time 
noble ; yet you have done it a merveille. The poem is 
eminently dramatic, but nothing of grace has been 
sacrificed to power or intensity. I have been trying to 
read Browning's " Fifine at the Fair." Have you seen 
it ? and do you think it poetry? I am beginning to 
rebel at the roughness and inversions and clippings of 
words and incomprehensibilities of much of our modern 
poetry, and am fain to say I do not enjoy it. It takes 
me back to my college days, and my struggles with the 
higher mathematics. I do not like calculus in verse. 
Did you ever hear the wicked story of the English- 
woman, who said when the Brownings were married, 
that it reminded her of the Athanasian Creed, not one 
incomprehensible, but two incomprehensibles ? In try- 
ing to read Fifine, I call up Robert Browning himself, as 
I was accustomed to, see him in London, in 1865-66, a 



266 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

perfectly conventional and companionable person, no- 
thing of the unintelligible Sphinx about him at all, but 
a gentleman who dressed for dinner, and talked " right 
straight along," and I wonder why he cannot write so, 
— write for ordinary peeple, who don't understand sine 
and cosine in prosody. 

I felt much obliged to you for the paper you sent me 
with the anecdote about Poe, which got into print with- 
out my knowledge or consent. I see that Mr. Envious 
Angry P. has made it the occasion of two little spiteful 
flings at me in the Virginia press, but I have returned 
good for evil, by praising his article on the Fourth of 
July, in Lippincott, which I thought good. 

I am very sorry I could send you nothing better in 
return for your poems than the little translation of Car- 
cassonne. Did you like it ? The original is exquisite. 
My kindest regards to your husband. 

Yours very truly and faithfully, 

John R. Thompson. 

FROM MISS ROSSETTI. 

56 Euston Square, London, N. W., England, 
21st May, 1872. 

Dear Mrs. Preston, — My sister Christina is too 
ill to have the pleasure of thanking you in her own hand 
for your very kind letter and gift, which arrived within 
a very short time of each other. Waifs across the At- 
lantic always give her peculiar pleasure, and so sympa- 
thising a reader is already an unseen friend. May I 
add for myself also the expression of strong American 
sympathies, 

And remain, yours faithfully, 

Maria Francesca Rossetti. 



LETTERS 267 

PROM MISS JEAN INGELOW. 

15 Holland Street, 
Kensington, London, W. (1872 ?) 

My dear Mrs. Preston, — I received your very 
kind note with much pleasure, and I thank you very 
cordially for it, and for the deeply interesting volume of 
poems you have sent me. It is indeed not in my nature 
to be ungrateful for these acknowledgments of friend- 
ship, but I hope you will pardon me, and not misunder- 
stand, if I add that I often feel a pang of something 
very like self-reproach, when I consider that I am unable 
to meet them all truly " half way." You, who are an 
author, must have often felt this : people read what you 
have written, and feel that they understand you, while 
you feel that you have no such clue to the meaning of 
their lives. When your book of poems came, I felt that 
I could meet you half way. I understand and appre- 
ciate many of those poems, and feel at one with their 
writer. Thank you very much for it, and for the kind 
things you have written. 

I am just returned from a short stay at Venice. I 
wished to see that lovely part of the world in the spring, 
and watch the washing of that blue sea which does not 
go down. On coming home, I found your letter. Please 
tell your children that I know a boy who is determined 
to find a fairy's vest, and he says when he has got it, he 
shall give it to me ! I send you a photograph lately taken, 
And I am, dear madam, very sincerely yours, 

Jean Ingelow. 

from miss anna warner. 

1. 
Satbrook, Conn., January 24th, 1873. 

My dear Madam, — I have received your very kind 
letter, and since that/the beautiful book, though I have 



268 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

been unable as yet to do more than begin my acquaint- 
anceship with its pages. In our intensely busy life, 
books — and letters too-— must sometimes wait a little. 
I have to beg your forgiveness now, for my tardy ac- 
knowledgment. But I thank you very truly for all your 
words and messages of friendship. It is wonderfully 
pleasant to find unknown friends in unexpected places ; 
and to hear how they came to be friends, and that we 
have in any way given help or pleasure to them. For 
though it is after all really the Lord's doing, and we 
have been but agents, it is none the less sweet for that. 

I am glad you have seen our beautiful Island, though 
it does not show for what it is, until you are fairly 
among its rocks. Then, we think it may compare with 
anything ; and we have enjoyed so much and suffered 
so much there, that every inch of ground seems precious. 
But we are not at the Island this winter. We are try- 
ing salt air, and a change of scene in a very different 
region, seeking a little refitting from the wear of over- 
work. If we are at home the next time you come to 
West Point, I hope you will not " overlook " the Island, 
in one sense, but will come to see us, and the views we 
love so well. 

I wish I could better tell you how we appreciate the 
words of your letter, and how truly I am, dear Mrs. 
Preston, 

Very gratefully yours, 

Anna Warner. 

from miss anna warner. 

2. 
Saybrook, Conn., Feb. 25th, 1873. 
My dear Mrs. Preston, — I cannot send you any- 
thing that even artistically is fit to stand "side-by-side " 
with the exquisite photograph of Jean Ingelow (if your 



LETTERS 269 

copy is like ours), but I send you the best I have. My 
sister's cartes, I am sorry to say, were all left in the 
Highlands ; but you shall have one of them another 
time. Thank you for your kind letter, and words of 
help. It is a great help to those who live by their work, 
to think that the fruits of it are not for themselves alone. 
Thank you, too, for the magazine. Do you know the 
origin of the " Woodpecker Legend " ? Only a few 
nights before the magazine came, a friend showed me a 
versification of the same story, by Phoebe Cary ; and I 
thought I should like to trace it back to its first begin- 
ning. Is it possibly a German legend ? 

I have been dipping into "Old Song and New" (I 
like to read some books that way), and finding there, 
too, friends in unexpected places. " The Young Ruler's 
Question" first came to our hands three years ago, in 
small pamphlet form, but with no name or hint of 
author. We liked it very much; and wondered and 
questioned who had written it. Very pleasant it was to 
find the answer in your book. May I ask whether the 
"Vision of the Snow" has any real story connected 
with it ? Forgive me the question, if I should not ask, 
but I read the lines with such a thrill of pleasure, that 
I wanted to know all about them if I might. 

And will you sometime send us your photograph, 
dear Mrs. Preston ? I should like to have it very much. 
I am very truly your friend, 

Anna Warner. 

This seems to be the place to tell briefly the 
story of Sandringham. Mrs. Preston used to give 
it as an instance of the caprice of that goddess 
whose favors go for fame: you shall have the 
record from the little diary of 1872 : — 



270 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Jan'y 8th: Lippincott's Editor has written asking 
some popular poem from me ; so I have idled away the 
morning trying to find a subject. Was completely 
baffled, and gave it up. 

Jariy 9th: I was looking over an English paper 
sent me by Miss Exall, when it occurred to me to write 
a poem called " Sandringham." With utmost ease I 
spun out nine or ten verses, then a guest came and I 
gave up the rest of the day to him. 

Jarty 10£A : Fixed a hat for A. ; wrote to Mr. P. ; 
corrected proof of some of my hymns ; finished, copied, 
and sent off " Sandringham " to Lippincott. 

Jarty 13th: Letter from John R. Thompson — 
very flattering, and ten copies of " Albion " with " Sand- 
ringham " in it. 

(The poem alluded to, as will be seen, was 
written at the time of the illness of the Prince of 
Wales.) 

SANDRINGHAM. 

Even here, within Sir Walter's Old Dominion, 

Among Virginian valleys shut away, 
Meeting, we questioned of the last opinion, — 

" What tidings come from Sandringham to-day ? " 

Midst the wild rush of our tumultuous cities, 

Whose billowy tides plunge seething on their way, 

The throb that stirs all hearts, was inmost pity's — 
*'Hope scarcely breathes at Sandringham to-day." 

Along the ice-chained waters of St. Lawrence, 

From fur- wrapped sledge — on crowded street and quay, 

A flood of eager askings poured their torrents, 
" What latest word from Sandringham to-day ? " 

On the lone outposts of our Southern borders, 

Where watch-fires keep the scalping knife at bay, 



LETTERS 271 

There mingled strangely with the morning " orders " 
The call, " Some news from Sandringham to-day ! " 

Where sits the golden queen of the Pacific, 
Glad wives with broken voices paused to say, 

" Sweet Princess ! " (while their brows grew beatific), 
" God bless her ! — Hope at Sandringham to-day ! " 

Out o'er the Occident's wide reach of ocean, 

Wherever vessels crossed each other's way, 
The trumpet blared abroad the strong emotion, 

" Hoy ! — Life or death at Sandringham to-day ? " 

From Hoogly's mouth to Kyber-Pass went flashing 
The quick inquiry. Where Australia's spray 

Closed o'er dropped anchors, through the breakers dashing, 
Sailors cried, " What of Sandringham to-day ? " 

The diamond delver, reeking under torrid 
Colonial suns that poured their blinding ray, 

Sighed as he raised aloft his burning forehead, 
" Spare, Lord, the life at Sandringham to-day ! " 

The same sweet yearning of responsive pity 

Went up all whither Christian people pray ; 
And Continental city asked of city, 

" What bulletin from Sandringham to-day ? " 

In every English Home — by Scottish ingle — 

At Ireland's hearths — on lone Welsh mountains grey, 

All hearts now with the girdling gladness tingle, 

" There's life — hope — health — at Sandringham to-day ! " 

Is faith lost in the human ? — Are ye able, 

Cold cynics, in your scorn to rend away 
The marvellous strands of that electric cable 

That links the world with Sandringham to-day ? 

March 29th : This morning I received from the Edi- 
tor of the " Cosmopolitan," London, a paper containing a 
paragraph very flattering to me ; viz. that H. R. H. the 



272 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Princess of Wales had written a letter to the Editor, 
thanking him for my poem of Sandringham ! He had 
published it. A feather in my cap ! Yet it required no 
more effort to write it than to write a letter. I did it 
almost impromptu. Little Herbert said, as if he thought 
my head might be turned, " Yes, but she did rtt know 
you were deaf ! " 

April 6th : Was told a week or two ago that Mr. 
Gladstone, on the floor of Parliament, had alluded to 
my poem of Sandringham : yet I can't get a sight of the 
paper (" The World ") and nobody has taken the trouble 
to verify the matter, or send me a copy. I surely don't 
nurse my fame. Nor does anybody do it for me ! Not 
one notice have I seen copied from " The Cosmopolitan." 
How this notice of my poem by the Princess of Wales 
would have elated me once! Now it is too late for 
enthusiasms ! 

May 9th : Had a letter from Editor of " Cosmopol- 
itan," London, in which he says he had been dining 
with the Hon. Mrs. Norton, and she had asked him for 
a copy of Sandringham ; to have it struck off on note 
paper, that she might circulate it among her friends ! 

" Too late for enthusiasms ! " This note of 
sadness is rarely absent now from Mrs. Preston's 
correspondence, where she spoke out of her heart ; 
though she continued to wear a cheerful counte- 
nance, and in fact enjoyed a great deal of life from 
day to day. She often reproached herself for for- 
getting her many blessings (and she had many to 
be thankful for) in the daily fret and jar. But 
everybody knows how much more aggressive trials 
are than blessings. 

It has been said in an earlier chapter that this 



LETTERS 273 

eager, ambitious, conscientious woman made grave 
mistakes in the ordering of her life, thereby missing 
the happy serenity that a less vehement person 
might have found in her circumstances. But she 
made them from an honest desire to neglect no 
duty. The trouble was with her mental perspective. 

She owned frankly that she was a poor manager 
of servants ; and yet she would have her house 
as clean and well ordered, her table as abundant 
and dainty as if she had a staff of those shining 
creatures one sees in the picture called "The 
Angels in the Kitchen." But it was accomplished 
at a deplorable loss of nervous force to the high- 
strung, nervous nature. And nobody could make 
her see these matters in a different light. 

All her letters of this date show that Mrs. Pres- 
ton's increasing bodily infirmities, her deafness, 
her failing eyesight, joined with her unreasonably 
keen anxiety about the health of her husband (who 
was ten years her senior), and her domestic cares, 
were steadily sapping her cheerfulness and vitality. 
Even now, one looks back upon it with pain. But 
in one of her own sonnets, the poet says, — 

" Pain is no longer pain when it is past," 

and with quiet thankfulness one remembers that 
for her pain is " past." 

Let it be emphasized once more that while this 
melancholy strain sounds throughout the rest of 
her life in all that she writes, Mrs. Preston was 
still keenly enjoying love and friendship and nature 
and literature and tne comforts of religious hope. 



274 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

There are some other letters in my hand, written 
after " Old Song and New " had appeared ; some 
of them after this first volume had been followed 
by " Cartoons," and although their dates run a 
little in advance of our narrative it seems best to 
put them together here. 

FROM LONGFELLOW. 
1. 

Cambridge, November 23, 1875. 

Dear Mrs. Preston, — I hasten to thank you for 
your kind letter, and your beautiful u Cartoons." 

If " His Aftermath " were not written about me, I 
should praise it cordially, as a charming poem. As it is, 
I can only thank you for it, and say that it has touched 
me deeply. 

Of the " Cartoons " I can speak more freely. They 
are not only full of beauty, but full of insight and 
thought and feeling. 

Accept my hearty congratulations on your achieving 
such a success, and believe me, with thanks and good 
wishes, 

Yours very truly, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

P. S. I am making a large collection of " Poems of 
Places," all the world over. Will you permit me to in- 
sert in it " The Reapers of Landisf arne," " Bacharach 
Wine," " The Count's Sowing," and " Lady Roberta's 
Harvest " ? 

This is for the present a secret 

FROM LONGFELLOW. 

2. 
Cambbidge, Dec. 16th, 1875. 

Dear Mrs. Preston, — In your beautiful poem of 
"The Reapers of Zawlisfarne," should you not say Lai- 



LETTERS 275 

disfarne ? That is the name of the Holy Island on the 
coast of Northumberland. So it is written by Scott, and 
by the best authorities within my reach. Is there also a 
Landisfarne ? If not, may I change the spelling in using 
the poem ? 

With many thanks for your letter, and your kind 
granting of my request, 

Yours very truly, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

FROM WHITTIER. 

Amesbtjry, 11th Month, 27, 1875. 

My dear Mrs. Preston, — Thy beautiful book has 
duly reached me, with thy kind letter. I have read the 
volume with surprise and pleasure. It is a rare exem- 
plification of poetic growth. I think it will gain thee 
friends and admirers wherever it goes. I wish I could 
have seen it sooner, as I should have added one or two 
of its poems to my " Songs of Three Centuries," a col- 
lection of English lyrics. As it is, I have thy hymn, 
" I would be ready, Lord," and " A Bird's Ministry." 

I read with pleasure my friend Paul H. Hayne's dedi- 
cation of his last volume to thee. It is a tribute well 
deserved, and is beautiful in itself. 

Take my best thanks for thy thinking of me in con- 
nection with thy new book, and believe me truly thy 
friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

Thanks for the picture of thy old Virginia mansion. 
I wish thee had added one of thyself. 

FROM THE REV. H. C. ALEXANDER, D. D. 

Hampton Sidney, Va., Nov. 14th, 1876. 
Kind Benefactor, — Was it not odd that I should 
have been reading your account of Madame Recamier in 



276 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

the Southern Magazine the very day I received your pre- 
sent, and should have been wishing I could see the forth- 
coming volume of your " Cartoons," of which I had read 
somewhere in the papers, and which was associated with 
thoughts of the French beauty by the words " Roberts 
Brothers." The very next post brought me your valued 
letter, and the little treasure of poems. I need hardly 
say that I have devoured the book, cover and all. Most 
of it I have read over and over, and much of it I had 
already by heart. I am not sure that it does not con- 
tain more of uniform and symmetrical merit than any 
of your previous collections. Certain am I that it is 
" totus te atque rotundus." The title, the distribution of 
pieces, the dedication, the opening and closing poems, 
in short, everything calling for feminine tact and femi- 
nine taste, is as it should be. In your former volumes, 
I have been inclined to prefer, on the whole, the lyrical 
parts. The truth is, I own to a passion for this species 
of literature. Burns and Scott among the canny folk, 
and wicked, lovely old Herrick (together with his com- 
peers Suckling, Carew, Crashaw, and that ilk) among 
the Angles, are prime favorites of mine. I like B6- 
ranger much more than I do Corneille or Racine, and 
Hafiz a little more than Firdusi. (Sotto voce : I know 
but one song of Hafiz, and can interpret only one word 
of that, the word gul — meaning " rose.") 

In the case before us, I am at a loss to decide be- 
tween " The Life of the Old Masters " or " The Life 
of To-day." Good poetry improves like wine. No man 
straightway desireth the new. Several of the shorter 
poems in " Cartoons " were dear acquaintances ; notably, 
" Gone Forward," " The Shade of the Trees," " Sand- 
ringham," " Through the Pass," " Agnes," " Letting Go 
of Hands," and " Harvested ; " and the tender riddles 



LETTEH3 277 

several of them offer with such exquisite delicacy, were 
plain to me. Nevertheless, " I pause in doubt " (as 
Tischendorf says). I congratulate you on the admirable 
success with which you have made the ateliers of old 
Venice and Rome and Florence to live and breathe again 
with their haunting presences and ancient memories. 
" Mona Lisa " deserves perhaps her place of honor, and 
ought certainly to have been well hung. The " Mae- 
stro " seems to have caught a weird touch or two from 
the prose of Poe or Hawthorne. " Sebastian " gave me 
a better idea of himself than I ever had before. " Donna 
Margherita " is powerfully rendered. It should please 
Browning. The same is true, possibly in a less degree, 
of " Poussin." " St. Sebald's " called up some of the 
most delightful of all my recollections : Nuremberg — 
Dttrer — Sachs — the castle ; the gateways ; the perfect 
wall ; the hollow red tiles ; the eye-shaped windows in 
each roof ; the jutting gable ends ; the costumes and 
ensemble of the middle ages. 

" Emigravit " I knew before. It is among your best- 
" Murillo's Trance " is exceedingly fine, especially as it 
nears and reaches the climax. I was struck by " The 
Shadow." " Tintoretto's Last Painting " carried me at 
once to the Lagoon and the Doge's palace, and set me 
down again before that gigantic canvas, with its innumer- 
able figures and fathomless perspective. The idea of this 
piece is a touching one, and the execution appropriate. 
Tintoretto would disappoint you as to color and refine- 
ment. With all his immense strength and inventiveness, 
he would shock you with a sense of rudeness, by the 
side of Titian, Palma Vecchio, and Paulo Veronese. I 
am aware that you know all this, but " seeing is believ- 
ing." " Woman's Art " I knew before (did n't I ?), 
and prized it highly. * The two most remarkable of your 



278 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Art pieces strike me as being your " Vittoria " and l< In 
the Sistine." These are the two highest subjects, and 
you have risen to the occasion. The dramatic force dis- 
played in the former is only equalled by its discerning 
knowledge. The latter is, I think, possibly the strongest 
thing you have done in this line. The description of 
Angelo's work (of which I have seen little or nothing) 
is masterly. The view of his great rival is more en- 
gaging than any I have seen ; and the close is fitting, 
where divine maternal beauty wins the contest over mas- 
culine corrugations and sinew. As to the Legends, I am 
not over-scrupulous, and enjoyed them highly. " Bede " 
is very happy. " St. Martin's Temptation " is a chef 
d'oeuvre, and it has been more than once paraphrased 
in one of my sermons. " Bacharach Wine " is rich and 
mellow. " The Legend of the Woodpecker " is amaz- 
ingly quaint, and otherwise good. " The Leaves of Heal- 
ing " is pretty. " The Royallest Gift " is a boon to 
Christian poesy. But the gem of the lot is " Dorothea's 

Roses," ah ! that is fragrant and beautiful as the 

dewy flowers themselves. It is, if I mistake not, the 
most beautiful thing in the whole volume. Of the Car- 
toons of " To-day," besides those I mentioned, " In an 
Eastern Bazaar " is itself a little bizaiTe, and was already 
photographed in my memory. It is sui-generis, and as 
full of tropic color as the canvas of him who complained 
of too much shadow. " Pio Nono " soliloquizes very 
" timeously " as the Scots express it. But I would have 
to name them all — indeed I would ! Every one is a 
jewel. The most musical thing in the book is " Under 
the Trees ; " and nobody else has exactly hit the tone in 
referring to Jackson's dying words. I thanked you for 
" Agnes " when it appeared. " She was all that to me " 
and to everybody. I did not miss the allusion in " Har- 



LETTERS 279 

vested " or in " Letting Go." " Prophets of Doubt " 
is just and apt, and rich with contemporary learning. 
" The Grandest Deed " is a noble commentary on what 
Christ says of penitents and angels. " By and By " is 
lovely — and in a sense higher than that of the boarding 
schools. The allusion in " Smitten " escapes me. Do 
you know I regard the first stanza of " Dead Days " as 
the most profoundly poetic (in the Leigh Hunt sense) 
of any I ever read of yours ? It has an Elizabethan 
flavor. The poem as a whole is one of your very finest, 
were I a judge. But it is fairly Sunday morning. 
Good-night, and a benison. 

You know you didn't mean that in earnest about 
women's books. Who indeed but they ? Men are so 
coarse. I greatly admire the range and wealth of your 
vocabulary. Such words as " Deaved " come in so well. 
There is small praise in saying there is not a false line 
in the whole of it : though I question the authority of 
your pronunciation in one or two instances. Two ladies 
have exulted with rne in the joy of these poems. One 
of them my own dear mother. . . . 

Regards to the Colonel ; your obliged friend, 

H. C. Alexander. 

FROM MISS JEAN INGELOW. 

15 Holland Street, Dec. 15. 
My dear Mrs. Preston, — Thank you very much 
for your kind letter, and the interesting volume which 
followed it in a few hours. I have read it with pecu- 
liar pleasure ; it is so fresh and fervent. I like your 
opening lines very much, and among others I thought 
" His Name " the most powerful, and " The Blemished 
Offering " the most complete. " Mona Lisa's Picture " 
I think very charming, but I am not at all able to pass 



280 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

a critical judgment, for I often find when I have se- 
lected my favorite pieces from any work that better 
critics prefer the others. 

We have had several delightful volumes from America 
lately ; and I hope Americans will rather preserve their 
own individuality than take the exact line of the Old 
World culture. 

Thanking you again for your kind words and your 
welcome gift, 

I am very sincerely yours r 

Jean Ingelow. 

from john burroughs. 

1. 

Esopus, N. Y., October 15, 1879. 
My dear Madam, — Over two months ago, my pub- 
lishers, Houghton, Osgood & Co., forwarded me a copy 
of the Richmond Standard, containing your notice of 
my last book, " Locusts and Wild Honey." I charged 
myself to write and thank you at once, but find I have 
not done so yet. I now hasten to repair the neglect. 
Your name was not unknown to me, and I assure you I 
appreciate the good opinion of so competent a critic as 
yourself. Your notice was discriminating and to the 
point. I have tired a little of this comparison with 
Thoreau, which comes so handy to most of the critics. 
It does injustice to us both. There is a wider or sharper 
difference, I think, than even you point out. Thoreau's 
aim was mainly ethical ; he preached always ; he was a 
priest, an anchorite ; he gave the facts of Nature a moral 
twist ; I like him, and owe him much, but hope I do not 
lean upon him. My own aim, so far as I have one, is 
purely artistic. I will paint the thing as it is, with such 
prismatic hues of the heart or the imagination as I can 
throw around it, but I will have no moral or anything 



LETTERS 281 

else between me and the fact described. I must have a 
pure artistic result. Gilbert White, on the other hand, 
aims mainly at the scientific ; he has a spell, a charm ; 
but his aim is to add to scientific knowledge, &c. You 
will pardon me for turning critic, and comparing my- 
self with those illustrious names ; but you book review- 
ers have set the example ; I only want to stand on my 
own pedestal, and not on that of Thoreau or Gilbert 
White. 

Thanking you again for your kindly notice, 
I am cordially yours, 

John Burroughs. 

from john burroughs 

2. 
West Park, N. Y., March 19, 1887. 
My Dear Mrs. Preston, — It gives me much plea- 
sure to be remembered by you in this way, and to know 
that my books have such a friend and champion in you. 
I very frequently see your name, and I never fail to 
read the poem, or the prose piece to which it is attached, 
having found out long ago that it is a name which al- 
ways stands for fine and conscientious literary work. I 
am reading your book with great satisfaction. You 
give one a real taste of those old lands, often the very 
flavor. You saw much more of it than ever I have, but 
I am hoping to go again one of these days, and to 
wander as far as Greece. The trouble with me over 
there is that I soon get sated ; there is so much to be 
seen and to be felt, and one is so eager for it all, that 
before long I find my capacity for enjoyment quite 
gone. If I go again, I must learn to hold myself in 
check somewhat. Of course I was pleased to read Miss 
Kingsley's words, and thank you for transcribing them 



282 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

for me. Your Colonial Ballads I shall be glad to see, 
though I have no such claim upon your kindness. Let 
me thank you for the book in advance. 
Very sincerely yours, 

John Burroughs. 

This last letter from Mr. Burroughs is put in 
here as a pendant to the first ; in point of fact, it 
was written ten years later, and its allusions are 
to Mrs. Preston's book of travel sketches, "A 
Handful of Monographs," and to her last pub- 
lished volume of poems, " Colonial Ballads and 
Other Verse," both published in the eighties. 

Mrs. Preston may have had trials of the flesh, 
trials by servants, and trials from her own un- 
reasonable countrymen : but without doubt she was 
cheered along her way by letters from some very 
charming correspondents. This one from Miss Mil- 
dred Lee, General R. E. Lee's youngest daughter, 
was but one of many such favors. 

FROM MISS MILDRED LEE. 

Chateau de la Basse-Motte, 
Brittany, France, July 28. 

My dear Mrs. Preston, — I was in Oxford a few 
weeks ago, and walking in " Addison's Walk," cut this 
little piece of box for you. That delicious shady walk, 
with the meadow on one side, and Magdalen gardens 
on the other ! How I wish you had been there with me, 
to tell me about all the famous men who must once 
have gazed on the same scene, — you who know every- 
thing, and forget nothing. Custis writes you are with 



LETTERS 283 

Elizabeth on a visit, but before this can cross the ocean, 
you will have had time to do so many things, and prob- 
ably will be at home. Ah ! how often my thoughts are 
there, in that quiet valley among the mountains ! . . . 
Do give my best love to all my dear friends there, and 
tell them I so often think of them. 

I was in London during the Jubilee season, when 
royal coaches in scarlet livery, carrying kings and queens 
of every nation, clime, and color, were dashing through 
the crowded streets. I met Mary there, and saw some- 
thing of London society: which after all is as unsat- 
isfactory as fashionable society in other places. I left 
London ten days ago, and am here in the heart of Brit- 
tany in an old Chateau surrounded by moat and char- 
mille ! Peasants in white caps and wooden shoes — 
Royalists whose grandparents were guillotined, and who 
are now plotting against the republic — descendants of 
leaders of the Vendean wars — all come and go before 
my eyes, like shadows in a dream ! 

General de Charette, who married Antoinette Polk 
from Tennessee, lives here, and is a great hero among 
the old noblesse ; so I see a most interesting phase of 
French life. His uncle was the Baron de C. of the 
first war of La Vende'e, and his father distinguished him- 
self in the second. Mrs. Polk and her daughter, who 
once stayed with me in Lexington, are also here. At 
eight in the morning, a maid brings me a cup of tea, 
and two slices of toast. Then I get up, and read and 
write by the open window until 12, when we all meet at 
breakfast, with its several courses. Then we sit on the 
lawn, talking and working until 5 o'clock tea ; after 
which we walk or drive, coming in to an 8 o'clock din- 
ner. After dinner, cards, music, "la conversation." 



284 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Thus the days slip by in this easy, pleasant fashion. I 
am reading lives of Anne de Bretagne, Bertrand de 
Guesclin, and trying to freshen up my knowledge of 
French history. Then think what a prolonged French 
lesson I am taking, hearing people chatter, chatter from 
morning till night. I confess I am painfully silent, ex- 
cept in my mother-tongue ! 

How are the Pendletons ? Do give them my love. 
But if I began asking after people I shall never end ! 
I am delighted the " Harry Lees " won ! I hope, dear 
Mrs. Preston, that you are much better than when I 
left. My dearest love to you and Col. Preston, and to 
Herbert. 

Ever yours affectionately, 

Mildred Lee. 

For many years Mrs. Preston's English friend, 
Miss Exall, wrote to her regularly, unconsciously 
taking the place of a " special London correspond- 
ent," and sending her "dear Mrs. Preston" all 
the liveliest bits of English literary gossip she 
could gather for her entertainment. One wonders 
if she exacted a promise that those letters should 
be destroyed ! For there is not one of them to be 
found. 

The letter with which this chapter closes, will 
show what another friend, an " inveterate " trav- 
eler, did for the Lexington invalid in the way of 
correspondence. Without looking at the name 
signed, many readers will recognize the voice of 
one who for our delight spent his vacations in 
" Sunny Spain " and among the Isles of Greece, as 
well as in more northern latitudes. 



LETTERS 285 

FROM PROF. J. A. HARRISON. 

Avignon, France, Aug. 4, 1877. 
My dear Mrs. Preston, — Have n't I just bought 
a pair of new Seven League Boots ? I expect you '11 
think so. My last letter dated from Greece, and this 
from France ! Well, but that was a month ago, and in 
a month one's hair grows white with experience. When 
I return I '11 tell you all about the modern Anarcharsis. 
This letter I '11 devote to Avignon, all be-jeweled as it 
is with lovely and lordly memories. The faces of Pe- 
trarch and Laura are carved like cameos all over the old 
place. I could n't help stopping here on my way to 
Paris, and peeping into its antique churches and palaces. 
To describe how I got here from Athens, would require 
a volume as long as Murray, and as big as Doomsday. 
Suffice it to say that the train from Marseilles landed 
me here last night after four hours' charming travelling 
through Provence and Languedoc, following the wind- 
ing and " arrowy " Rhone through mazes of olives and 
almonds, vineyards and mulberries. With what a bril- 
liant caress the roses hang over the hedges here, and 
bloom right in your face ! What dainty little vine- 
covered stations we passed, with women in quaint caps 
standing in front, and holding lanterns as we flew by in 
the gathering dusk ! What fantastic walled and tur- 
reted towns we came to, standing grey by the silver 
Rhone, as if just awake from a sleep of ages ! And 
then the innumerable black gowned priests, white-and- 
blue bloused children, bright, handsome Provencal faces, 
and vineyards and vineyards again ! A glorious sunset 
hung rich and low over fertile Languedoc as our train 
sped on, suffusing the sky with a blush as if from its 
own myriad roses, warming up all the grand grey cliffs 
and distances, and adding to one of the most perfect 



286 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

landscapes just that touch of mysterious idealization to 
make it hang about one's memory like a perfume. 
There was a fat priest in with me, who almost guillo- 
tined himself in the window looking and looking. Then 
he 'd lapse into the abysses of a gigantic carpet-bag, and 
haul out an enormous lunch. Then there 'd be praying 
out of a large black book, and crossing, and guillotining 
again. Then another priest, and a monstrous chatter- 
ing for an hour. Finally, when it was too dark to see 
the approach to the city, we arrived at Avignon. My 
hotel is itself a curiosity. Something between a dun- 
geon, a palace, a pavilion, and a monastery. Bright and 
early (nine o'clock or so), I got up and breakfasted, 
bent on exploring the old pontifical town, and finding 
out what I could of the rascalities of Petrarch and 
Laura. I vow I '11 never read Petrarch's sonnets again, 
— no, not for twenty Lauras ! Full of enthusiasm (and 
breakfast) I smilingly accosted mine host, and inquired 
after the Eglise des Cordeliers, where Laura's ashes re- 
pose. He looked puzzled, and then — " Oh ! She be 
no more dare, she been take up ! " My face lengthened 
at least a yard : " Laura taken up ? Good heavens ! 
This will never do — Laura taken up indeed ! " I felt 
insulted ; Vaucluse, too, 17 miles away by carriage, and 
quite inaccessible. Was ever pilgrim so damped and 
humiliated ? It 's like going to church to pray, and 
finding your patron saint stolen. I put it all, however, 
to Petrarch's abominable door — wretched scribbler ! 
Think of my wading through his fat sonnets, and 
through miles and miles of Italian — and Laura u taken 
up " ! It 's well that Avignon is as lovely as it is, or I 
might immortalize myself by doing what Erostistus did 
on the night Alexander the Great was born. Avignon 
is lovely. I went out to walk, and am just returned. 



LETTERS 287 

It is walled and battlemented and bastioned to one's 
heart's delight, and is all clustered about a magnificent 
cliff which has been carved into terraces, and made 
gorgeous with a Louis Quatorze garden. The views 
from this garden, up and down the valley of the Rhone, 
towards the Alps, and over the city — are fairylike. 
Mont Blanc, though 100 miles away, buried in light 
and mist, may sometimes be seen. Ponds full of black 
and white ducks, swans and cygnets — a splendid grotto 
and fountain — great beds where the sunlight has blos- 
somed into exquisite flowers — the fine old Cathedral, 
and Palace of the Popes — are some of the ornaments 
of this beautiful sight; and far below run the ancient 
mediaeval walls, and there is a flashing up of bright 
water from the Rh6ne, and a glorious expanse of mani- 
fold fields illimitable. Avignon realizes perfectly one's 
ideal of a real old mediaeval city. The Cathedral bell 
is sweeter than anything you ever heard ; the lustrous, 
lazy sunlight hangs about the old square, with the true 
sleepiness of the Dark Ages ; the streets are Gothic in 
their quaint tortuosity, and rise and sink in flights of 
marble steps ; the inns might have entertained Mon- 
taigne ; the huge elms sleep along the river, and mutter 
musically in a sort of poetic vacuity. There is nothing 
new except the soldiers in their red breeches, and the 
newsboys with their strange cries of "La Re'publique 
Francaise." It 's delightful once in a while to be in 
such a time-flavored old place — to sink oneself in its 
sweet reverie — to partake for a moment of its inac- 
cessibility, and forget the fast and furious present. I 
stop every now and then at such places, just to catch a 
whiff of the placid past, and to strengthen myself for a 
new whirl of railways, steamboats, and omnibuses. Pe- 
trarch may go to the *crows, and Laura too, " taken up " 



288 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

though she may be — Avignon is still here — a lovely, 
grave old place, steeped in historic associations, fallen 
asleep by the beautiful Rhone, though still talking so 
beautifully to us as it sleeps. Well, it is nearly time for 
me to start. The train leaves at 3.18 for Lyons and 
Paris. I hope you and the Colonel have had a pleasant 
summer. Mine has of course been very varied — a 
great deal of sea, with strips of land every once in a 
while. Do remember me kindly to all my friends, the 
Leas particularly. Just think of my not having had yet 
one line from America ! 

Faithfully your friend, 

James A. Harrison. 



CHAPTER XI 

LAST LETTERS 

In looking for records of the year 1875, it is 
interesting to see what goal our poet set before 
herself for that year's running. Not the appear- 
ance of a new volume of poems, though "Car- 
toons " was in preparation, and, as a matter of 
fact, did appear before the year was out ; but on 
the fly-leaf of one of Mrs. Preston's tiny year- 
books (they are about four inches long and two 
wide) one finds this quotation from Ben Jonson's 
" Penshurst " : — 

" What praise was heaped 
On thy good lady, then, who therein reaped 
The just reward of her high housewifery ; 
To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh 
When she was far : and not a room but dressed 
As if it had expected such a guest ! " 

This motto being set for the year, it is not sur- 
prising to find daily records of the usual jellies 
and jams, pickle and sausage making, and house- 
cleaning galore. The diary even boasts of " paint- 
ing the hearth with my own hands," as if the lit- 
tle white fingers did not deserve a rap over the 
knuckles for doing what any one of the lady's 
three servants could have done as well. 



290 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

But under rare Ben's housewifery lines, on the 
note-book's fly-leaf, there is a brief quotation from 
"Browne of 1649": — 

" By her song those fairest hands 
Were comforted in working-." 

And so it was with the days of that year. Besides 
360 letters, 46 book notices, putting together the 
poems for " Cartoons," correcting proof for that 
volume, writing for children's papers and for 
various occasions, Mrs. Preston keeps record 
of nineteen poems : among them " Inasmuch ? " 
" Comforted," " Kingsley," " Beda Venerabilis," 
" Tintoretto," " Aftermath," and " Bacharach 
Wine." The joy of creating no doubt " com- 
forted " the hand for hearth-painting ! 

But extracts from letters of this period will now 
continue the story. 

TO E. P. A. 

Lexington, May 5th, 1877. 
I must send you if but one line, that much at least, 
before the week closes. I have been and still am quite 
unwell. I had to take to my back yesterday. Let this 
among other things suffice as apology for not writing. 
. . . We formed a Woman's Foreign Missionary Asso- 
ciation this week. I am the president. We merely 
pledge ourselves for a certain sum every month. I hope 
it will accomplish something. . . . Times are as hard 
as ever. Our garden is not yet half dug ; you see how 
backward we are. Your father thanks you for your 
sweet birthday letter ; he says " Monuments of anti- 
quity " are not expected to make replies. Kisses to the 
babies — especially to my Maggie — God bless you and 
yours. Ever affec. — M. J. P. 



LAST LETTERS 291 

4 Home, Friday (waiting for the folks 
to come to breakfast). 

Dearest E., — Before I plunge in medias res for the 
day, here 's a line. I have pickles to make among other 
matters, so will be very busy to-day. . . . Alas! I 
did n't get my note finished before breakfast, and since 
that, to this hour (5 p. m.) I have been on the go inces- 
santly, till I am tired out. I have boiled jelly, pared 
peaches for preserves, and put up twenty or thirty lbs. 
of sweet pickle : am not quite through yet, as I have 
a kettle on the stove this minute. I have a woman in 
Alice's place, who does not do a thing right if she can 
possibly find the wrong way. To-day she snatched up 
my kettle (she is as slow as a snail except when she is 
doing something wrong) while I was turning round, after 
I had boiled down my peach syrup, and poured into 
it a bucket full (actually) of cold water. Imagine my 
trouble, with my 30 lbs. of fruit ! This is the way I get 
on. . . . 

The drought has become alarming : ice is giving out 
all over the town ; ours will only last about a week 
longer ; water is scarce ; vegetables are exhausted ; we 
have only potatoes and tomatoes. We hope for the 
hunters home to-morrow ; they have only killed one 
deer ; it is such a disappointment ; the dogs could not 
trail because of the drought. The dead leaves are 
strewn all over the yard ; I have to have them raked 
up. 

Love to all. 

Ever your loving, 

M. J. P. 

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the 
Lexington Presbyterian Church, alluded to in the 
first of these extracts, was proposed and organized 



292 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

by Mrs. Preston herself, and its success was one 
of the sweetest satisfactions of her life. She lived 
to see it undertake the support of two missionaries 
on the foreign field ; and although for many years 
before her removal from Lexington, ill health pre- 
vented her from attending the meetings, she con- 
tributed generously to its treasury as long as she 
lived, and the mention of it never failed to rouse 
her interest. It would be a mistake to leave un- 
noticed this deep interest of Mrs. Preston's whole 
life in the Church's great commission to evange- 
lize the world. It was a rather uncommon interest 
in the days when she was young ; but her father's 
zeal in the cause was doubtless her first incentive, 
and later on she had dear friends in the foreign 
service. 

" A Bird's Ministry " was suggested by an in- 
cident that came in one of those strangely thin, 
foreign-looking letters, which her children remem- 
ber feeling so much curiosity about. They were 
from the Rev. Mr. Loenthall, a devoted mission- 
ary of Peshawur, India, and only want of space 
obliges Mrs. Preston's biographer to leave them out 
of the pages devoted to her memory. It touches 
one to find among Mrs. Preston's papers, in a re- 
cord of what she counted her failures in life, that 
she set down for her comfort and encouragement 
the opportunity she had once made of interesting 
two children in the work of Foreign Missions : one 
of these children became a preacher of the Gospel, 
and wherever he went as pastor, a lively concern 
for the Foreign Mission work manifested itself ; 



LAST LETTERS 293 

the other, who had more than one opportunity 
of organizing children's missionary societies, Mrs, 
Preston was pleased to think had also been service- 
able to the great cause. This the humble Chris- 
tian counted as the most valuable thing she had 
ever done in her life ! 

TO e. p. A. 

Thursday : Half -hour before 
dinner. (1876 ?) 

Dearest E., — Does anybody ever write you such 
slovenly, ill-conditioned letters as I do ? Now here is 
a half hour which I can crowd a letter into — shall this 
be done ? or would you rather wait until some future 
day when sufficient leisure offers to allow of something 
respectable ; something in the Madame de SeVigne* style 

— at least something worthy the eye of that charming 
letter-writer of my acquaintance — Mrs. A. ? No, I 
think you 'd rather have the hurried scratch just now — 
so here it is. 

After I wrote last, I went down to Brother Eben's 
to see Julia, and bid her and the boys good-bye ; had 
a nice little visit, my two boys being with me. Never 
before were there so many of my father's descendants 
together. Tom and his family have been here for some 
days, and we have a right noisy household. Little 
Frank Junkin, too, is staying here. But I feel lonely 

— as I gave up my big boy on Tuesday for Hampden 
Sidney. What a reduced family we shall be this winter 

— I dread to think of it. 

I am entirely upset about my domestic arrangements. 
. . . Zue was dismissed by Mr. P. two days ago, and I 
have no cook and don't know where to find one. She 
became so insufferably insolent, finishing by ordering 



294 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

me out of the kitchen, that Mr. P. sent her right off — 
although I was willing " to eat dirt " and keep her in 
face of her insults to me, because the dismissing of her 
was doing such despite to myself. I have a very dis- 
agreeable, impudent, raw country girl in Emma's place 
— so life is not just as pleasant, under present aspects, 
as it might be, to me. 

Lexington is all gone or going to the Exposition ; 
Gen. Smith is all agog about taking the cadets. 

TO MISS GLASGOW. 

Saturday, Jan. 6th, '77. 

My dear Rebecca, — I this morning received your 
note, and although my eyes have been in such a condi- 
tion lately that I have had to give up using them, I must 
answer you even while their aching is a continual pro- 
test. I am sorry I cannot send you the book to read for 
which you ask — I sent it off to a distant friend. But 
I will leave at the P. O. for you, hoping you may get 
the package, a couple of other books. One, " My Little 
Love," is just published this autumn, and is Marian 
Harland's last. It may interest you to know that the 
" little love " was her own child Alice, who died aged 
eleven, two or three years ago. Many of the circum- 
stances are true — and indeed I suppose the major part 
of the story — for the child was just what she describes 
" Ailsie " to have been. Yesterdays with Authors is 
not new, but it is quite entertaining. If it could be ar- 
ranged so that I could send books to the P. O. for you, 
I would be very glad to supply your wants ; tell me if I 
can so deposit them, and you so return them. 

You must not be too sorrowful, dear friend, over the 
dear one gone. She lived longer than the promise — 
and was tired and wanted to go. It is vain to try to 



LAST LETTERS 295 

talk down heartaches, I know, and perhaps the deepest 
sympathy is that which says nothing. 

K. has a houseful and a heartful — I daresay she is 
as happy as she can be teaching her children ; give her 
my love. My G., who is a student at Hampden Sidney, 
has been home for Christmas, and has just gone again. 
We are very much of a stripped household now ; I had 
a letter from J. the other day : she is overborne with the 
work of the Missionary Society, that so absorbs her I am 
afraid she will wear out her health. My brother G. and 
part of his family are going to Europe in the spring. 
Mr. Preston expected to go too, and take me for a Con- 
tinental trip, but he has had to give it up, greatly to my 
regret and disappointment. 

But my eyes ache so that I must stop — A Happy 
New Year to you all. 

Ever your affectionate friend, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

TO MISS GLASGOW. 

Lexington, Va., Nov. 28th, 1877. 

My dear Rebecca, — I was glad to get your pleas- 
ant letter the other day ; it lifted me away from the 
engrossing present into the far past — how far, how far 
away it seems, that past of which you write ! I can with 
difficulty compel myself to believe that more than twenty 
years sever me from it ! I have to look at my tall boys 
to realize its truth. 

My poor dear husband has just passed through — 
not quite through yet — the most serious illness of his 
life. For a month I have been watching and nursing 
him. He is up and about now, but far from being 
restored: and I still feel anxious. Our happiness al- 
ways has a possible shadow behind it. 



296 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

I send you Kingsley's Life — I don't know that I 
could give you a truer proof of my desire to gratify 
you, for I have positively refused to lend it to my most 
intimate friends in Lexington when they have asked for 
it — so constantly have I had books injured by careless 
handling, and this book I specially prize. You will take 
care of it, I know — so I send it, and you will enjoy 
the letters from Mrs. Kingsley to me — they show such 
tender, devoted love to her husband. 

J. came near meeting Mrs. Kingsley when in Eng- 
land, but missed her, to my extreme regret. 

She (J.) had a charming summer abroad : and is as 
busy now as ever with her large missionary work. 

But I suffer still with my old trouble of delicate sight, 
and have written more than I ought. Love to K. and M. 
Ever affectionately yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

TO THE HAYNES. 

Lexington, Va., Dec. 26th (1877). 
My dear Mr. Hayne, — I was no little surprised 
and delighted at your munificent remembrance of us — 
Mr. P. and myself — on Xmas Day. Your package ar- 
rived safely and duly, and how shall I thank you for 
your tender and loving thought of us ? In the first 
place, accept, dear Mrs. Hayne, my husband's thanks 
for your unexpected remembrance of him. What right 
had he to suppose that you thought him worth a Xmas 
greeting ? dear old man that he is ! And how rich you 
have made me with the exquisitely put up edition of 
Maud ! Dear Mrs. Hayne, it was very kind and sweet 
of you ! and I do thank you ever and ever so much. I 
wish I could kiss you my thanks this morning. Your 
present too, dear Mr. Hayne, is very acceptable and 



LAST LETTERS 297 

well-chosen. I read everything I get hold of about 
Charles Lamb, and this volume is entirely new to me : 
so when I delight myself over its pages, I will think of 
you as I turn them. — And I — shame on me ! — have 
sent you nothing but good wishes and kind thoughts ! 
Well, I have been such an invalid, that I have been 
obliged to let the season slip by without being able to 
do anything to celebrate it. My husband and my boys 
went out hunting yesterday, and I passed the entire day 
on my sofa, reading Elizabeth Barrett's Letters to R. H. 
Home, in which employment I found great delight. 
Mildred Lee was here the other day, and we were talk- 
ing of Mrs. Browning. She told me she had been to 
Casa Guidi, and she had asked two accomplished Eng- 
lish girls of her acquaintance to go with her to visit Mrs. 
Browning's grave. "Mrs. Browning — Mrs. Brown- 
ing," they replied — " who is Mrs. Browning ? " " Your 
English poet," Mildred answered, in much surprise at 
their ignorance. " Well, if she was English, how then 
came she to be buried here in Florence ? and how in the 
name of wonder did you ever hear of her away in Amer- 
ica and know that she was buried here ? " Their as- 
tonishment was boundless. Mildred says, by the way, 
that the want of general culture in well born and ac- 
complished and highly educated young English people 
is wonderful. They will play exquisitely, and speak 
two or three languages, and yet hardly know who 
Tennyson is. A friend of mine from Lexington, now 
living abroad, says the same thing. She says there is 
nothing so stupidly ignorant of things in general as the 
young English girls she meets in her travels. 

I have been enjoying some fine photographs looked 
at through a Graphiscope — sent me by my brother 
from Munich, the other day. The only peculiarity about 



298 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

the large glass is that it magnifies without in the slightest 
altering the fineness of the picture. 

How lovely your verses to Whittier were ! Ne nimis 
was your motto, and well you carried it out. That was a 
pretty tribute to the old Poet in the " Literary "World." 
Did you see some verses in the last " Galaxy " by our 
cousin here, Col. Preston Johnson ? He brought them 
to me, to " touch up," and I gave them the requisite 
smoothing. 

You are very kind to trouble yourself about any 
poems (?) of mine — and to inquire for matter for such 
an anthology as the beautiful one in progress of forma- 
tion by Mr. Longfellow. I 'm afraid the South will not 
cut any great figure in Poems of Places ; barring your- 
self, Timrod, and a few occasional singers, here and 
there, where are our Poets ? Our women singers are 
scarcer still ; I won't hurt my own feelings by trying to 
count them on one hand ! 

Well, as to anything I have written on Place, I have 
carefully weeded out names, generally, in putting verses 
into book form. I could not command printed copies 
of the two or three trifles I send you. These may be 
quite too insignificant to use — but we have, as I said, 
outside of yourself and Timrod, not much choice. 

In " Old Song and New " I have marked two or three 
pieces which were written with reference to Place, sub- 
stituting the titles they ought to have had. If you think 
Mr. Longfellow would care to look at these, you will 
please send him the copy I despatched by mail to you 
to-day. I almost hope no war poems will be admitted 
into this collection. I cannot think that such a piece as 
" The Mausoleum " could commend itself to Mr. Long- 
fellow, but since you have forwarded a copy, I enclose 
a corrected one. 



LAST LETTERS 299 

I am ambitious that the poor South should have some 
representation in these volumes as creditable to itself as 
possible — and I know no one as well qualified as you 
are, to suggest subjects. May I hear from you after 
you know what Mr. Longfellow's wish is, in regard to 
the admission of war poems ? 

Is n't the Series a beautiful one ? The reader is 
taken by the hand by the Poet himself, and conducted, 
as it were, over the earth on a poetic tour — the Poet 
his cicerone, and the Anthology, a sort of divine Guide- 
Book. Verily we are a pampered people, these days ! 
Not even put to the trouble of making decisions in re- 
gard to what is best. Like the dwellers on the banks 
of the Amazon of whom Humboldt writes, whose lives 
were never vexed by having to decide questions, and 
whose faces consequently wore no wrinkles even in old 
age. We ought to be placid, I 'm sure, helped on all 
sides by choosers whose ability it can never enter our 
minds to question. 

(I never of my own accord could have written a poem 
to be read on a public occasion of the sort indicated by 
the enclosure, but I was requested to stand up for Vir- 
ginia, so I dashed off these verses in two or three hours 
— about two, I think.) 

I received your very kind letter, and also the printed 
extract. How very thoughtful you were to send me 
something to encourage me — I know Mr. Price, the 
writer, but he is absurd to contrast not compare me with 
George Eliot. However, he is very guarded and only 
does it in the matter of Christian faith, and " that is 
the gift of God." 

Written at the request of the Poe Memorial 
Association of New York, and read at their " Fes- 
tival " in the Academy of Music, April 23. 



300 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

AT LAST. 

BY MARGARET J. PRESTON, OF VIRGINIA. 

If he were here to night — the strange, rare poet, 
Whose Sphinx-like face no jestings could beguile — 

To meet the award at last, and feel and know it 
Securely his — how grand would be his smile ! 

How would the waves of wordless grief, that ever 
His haughty soul had swept through surging years, 

Sink to a mystic calm, till he would cover 
His proud pale face to hide the happy tears ! 

Is there no token of a ghostly presence ? 

No weird-like waning of the festal show ? 
No galleried corner shorn of iridescence, 

Where those " Orestean eyes " might flash their glow ? 

Who knows the secrets of that strange existence — 
That world within a world — how far, how near ; 

Like thought for closeness, like a star for distance — 
Who knows ? The conscious essence may be here. 

If from its viewless bonds the soul has power 

To free itself for some ethereal flight, 
How strange to think the compensating hour 

For all the tragic Past, may be to-night ! 

To feel that, where the galling scoffs and curses 
Of Fate fell heaviest on his blasted track, 

There, Fame herself the spite of Fate reverses, — 
Might almost win the restless spirit back. 

Though the stern Tuscan, exiled, desolated, 

Lies mid Ravenna's marshes far away, 
At Santa Croce still his stone is feted, 

And Florence piles her violets there to-day ! 

Though broken-hearted the sad singer perished, 
With woe outworn, amid the convent's gloom, 



LAST LETTERS 301 

Yet how pathetic are the memories cherished, 
When Rome keeps Tasso's birthday at his tomb ! 

So, though our poet sank beneath life's burden, 
Benumbed and reckless through the crush of fate ; 

And though, as comes so oft, the yearned-for guerdon, 
No longer yearned for, since it comes too late, — 

He is avenged to-night 1 No blur is shrouding 
The flame his genius feeds : the wise, and brave, 

And good, and young, and beautiful are crowding 
Around to scatter heart's-ease o'er his grave ! 

And his Virginia, like a tender mother 

Who breathes above her errant boy no blame, 

Stoops now to kiss his pallid lips, and smother 
In pride her sorrow, as she names his name. 

Could he have only seen in vatic vision 
The gorgeous pageant present to our eyes, 

His soul had known one glimpse of joy elysian : 
Can we call no man happy till he dies ? 

Lexington, Va., Dec. 1st, '81. 
My dear Mr. Hayne, — I feel as if I owed you va- 
rious letters, inasmuch as yours have been so long and 
mine so short. But between illness and house-repairing 
and the work other people put upon me who have no 
claim to an iota of my service, I am well nigh done out. 
Dear Mr. Hayne, does every literary fledgeling who 
writes a poem or a book, send you the MS. and ask 
you to put it in shape for the press ? Does everybody 
who wants to get a story published in Scribner or 
Harper write and request you to arrange the terms for 
them ? Does every poetling who writes a jingle insist 
that you shall prepare such book notices as will make it 
sell forthwith ? Do the people who translate send you 
their MS. to revise*? Does everybody ask you for 



302 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

special poems for this, that, and the other public (or 
private) affair ? Well, they do me ! I am tormented 
by this sort of thing to such a degree that I have to set 
all manner of work aside, to answer these letters or do 
these jobs I Here lies a voluminous MS. — a transla- 
tion — from a man I have never seen and never expect 
to see, requesting me to revise it for the press — as he 
wants it handsomely illustrated ! I have n't read a 
page of it yet, and if I don't do this, he will be offended. 
Invariably I find this is the case. If I decline, saying 
my eyes won't bear it, or my health, they are forthwith 
angry. A lady in Kentucky sends me a MS. the merest 
doggerel, and asks me to sell it for her, make arrange- 
ments with the publishers, sell the 7 photographs she 
has taken to illustrate it, and send all to her ! She is 
evidently outdone with me that I don't do it. Here lies 
a book from a woman in Old Virginia begging me to 
procure her such patronage for it through writing it up, 
that it will sell in Maryland ! 

The method chosen for carrying on the story of 
these later years of Mrs. Preston's life, namely, by 
stringing together certain letters written during 
that period, has perhaps this grave fault: that 
it leaves out many important phases of the poet's 
life, which as a letter-writer she takes for granted, 
and does not chatter about. 

For instance ; she was first of all not a poet, 
critic, literary woman, housemistress, nor even 
friend, — though she was all of these to a high 
degree, — but she was first of all a wife. That 
made the warp and woof of her days ; these other 
avocations were but fringes or embroideries on the 
garment of her life. 



LAST LETTERS 303 

Yet, when she turns aside to write a letter, 
naturally she speaks of other matters than conjugal 
love and companionship. So that an acute critic 
complains to me, in looking over these pages, that 
Mrs. Preston's husband seems to disappear out of 
her life after the war. 

As a matter of fact, the two grew more and 
more dependent upon each other as the years went 
by : they were rarely separated for a day ; and 
when in 1882 Colonel Preston resigned his place 
as Professor of Latin and English at the Virginia 
Military Institute, the husband and wife were more 
inseparable than ever. 

This matter of resigning his professorship was 
most characteristic of the man : he had just reached 
what he called " the birthday of the limitation," 
the threescore years and ten ; and though he was 
in full possession of his faculties of mind and body, 
having almost the sight and hearing of a young 
man, will and memory strong, perception keen, 
the whole man practically intact, he yet insisted 
upon resigning his place, rather than leave it to 
others to find him less efficient than a younger 
man ! 

As events proved, his course was the best ; not 
for the reason that moved him at the time, but be- 
cause his wife's infirmities, her failing health, her 
failing eyesight, her increasing deafness, made his 
constant companionship more and more necessary 
to her. 

Every summer, from 1874 to 1888, Colonel and 
Mrs. Preston spent ^several months at McDonogh 



304 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

School, twelve miles from Baltimore, in the home of 
Colonel Allan, who had married the only daughter 
left to the Preston household, two having been 
taken away by death. This stepdaughter of Mrs. 
Preston was only nine years old at the time of her 
father's second marriage ; she had known no other 
mother, and was in all respects as Mrs. Preston's 
own child. McDonogh School was established in 
1873 on a foundation left by John McDonogh, the 
New Orleans millionaire, for the education of poor 
boys of good character from the city of Baltimore. 
Colonel William Allan (who had been a member 
of Stonewall Jackson's staff, and chief ordnance 
officer of the Second Corps, Army of Northern 
Virginia) was called from the chair of applied 
mathematics in Washington and Lee University 
in 1873, to create and preside over this school. 

When Colonel and Mrs. Preston first visited 
McDonogh in the summer of 1874, they found fifty 
boys quartered in the upper stories of the fine old 
mansion, on what had been the "Foxleigh " estate ; 
and the beautiful fields and woods and streams of 
this eight hundred acre farm was devoted to their 
agricultural training, and to their healthy enjoy- 
ment ; while a frame annex to the main house pro- 
vided them with dining hall and class-rooms. 

McDonogh School was from the first — and still 
is — a place of unique interest ; and henceforth, as 
long as they lived, these two old lovers spent the 
happiest days of their years (so they constantly 
said) under the noble trees and on the wide por- 
tico of this delightful place. 



Last letters 305 

Colonel Preston had been all his life more in- 
terested in the education of boys than in anything 
else ; and here he saw fifty — an hundred — pres- 
ently an hundred and fifty boys brought under 
influences which rarely failed to make healthy, 
happy, upright, successful men of them. 

"I have been a schoolmaster for almost half 
a century," Colonel Preston used to say to his 
daughter, " but I have never seen such splendid 
management and training and teaching in my life, 
as your boys get here from Colonel Allan, Mr. 
Lyle, and Mrs. Young." 

An old McDonogh boy spoke to me only yester- 
day of the vivid picture his memory had held for 
more than twenty years of Colonel Preston ; of 
seeing his erect figure, dressed in the Confederate 
gray he always wore, striding over the McDonogh 
hills at daylight, his trousers stuffed in his boots 
cavalry fashion, and in his hand a posy of wild 
flowers for the old sweetheart's breakfast plate. 
It was gratifying to find that he remembered, 
too, the Sunday morning talks which the old Chris- 
tian delighted to give the boys at " eleven o'clock 
chapel," when he stood before them, Bible in 
hand, to speak of the greatest theme of time or 
eternity, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

"We leave all worries behind us, great and 
small, when we come to McDonogh," Mrs. Preston 
would say ; and those of us who are left remember 
with quiet thankfulness the deep draughts of peace 
and happiness which she and her husband took 
there. 



306 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

One of the pleasures of McDonogh to the Pres- 
tons was the friendship of Mrs. Josepha Young, 
its lady matron, whose beauty and wit and warm- 
heartedness gave them unfailing delight year by 
year. She became as dear to them as their own 
people, and the old cavalier declared it was a lux- 
ury to be in the house with such a pretty woman ! 

It was during these years, when the husband and 
wife were seldom seen apart, that a merry Lexing- 
ton woman said, " Dear me ! Mrs. Preston, I be- 
lieve you think you could not be happy in Heaven 
without the Colonel ! " And the wife answered 
earnestly, " Indeed I know I could not ! " This 
suggested the sonnet, — 

WE TWO. 

Ah, painful sweet ! how can I take it in ! 

That somewhere in the illimitable bine 

Of God's pure space, which men call heaven, we two 
Again shall find each other, and begin 
The infinite life of love, a life akin 

To angels' — only angels never knew 

The ecstasy of blessedness that drew 
Us to each other, even in this world of sin. 
Yea, find each other ! The remotest star 

Of all the galaxies would hold in vain 
Our souls apart, that have been heretofore 
As closely interchangeable as are 

One mind and spirit : oh, joy that aches to pain, 
To be together — we two — forever more ! 

In our Valley of Virginia climate, we think the 
most delightful days of the year come with what 
we call " Indian summer." The winter may have 
set in early ; storms may have wrecked the land- 



LAST LETTERS 307 

scape ; frost may have blighted all the flowers ; but 
we count upon a few halcyon days, at least, in late 
November, when the air is so soft, the sky so blue, 
the sunshine so sweet, that mere existence is a joy. 

It was so with this poet's life : her winter did set 
in rather early, the storms were not wanting, and 
the cruel frosts of failing health, loss of sight and 
of hearing, and other less biting, yet sharp trials 
marred the fair garden of her life. But late in 
her autumn there came a season of rare and unal- 
loyed pleasure, an Indian summer of delight such 
as she declared she had never known before. 

This was the summer of 1884, which Mrs. Pres- 
ton spent abroad with her husband, her oldest 
son, her sister, and, for part of the time, with her 
brothers (Mr. George Junkin and Dr. William F. 
Junkin) and their families. 

Rarely has a traveler taken abroad such accu- 
rate knowledge of the places she was to see as 
Mrs. Preston did. " Don't show me," she would 
say again and again to the guide, " let me find that 
grave — or bust — or picture — myself." And she 
would become the guide of the party, leading them 
— to their astonishment — straight to the desired 
spot. Her whole life seemed to have been a prepa- 
ration for that one golden summer, and she enjoyed 
it to the full. 

With her son (a young M. D.) to take charge 
of the party and relieve his father of all care, and 
a sister to minister to all her wants, Mrs. Preston 
could not possibly have traveled in greater comfort 
and ease and light-neartedness and enjoyment than 



308 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

she did. Except for the ill health and feeble 
eyesight which she had long borne, not a cloud 
shadowed the tour from beginning to end; not 
a day failed to bring its tribute of interest and 
pleasure ; everything was seen couleur de rose, 
nothing disappointed, and for the rest of her life 
Mrs. Preston's memories of that summer sweetened 
existence for her. 

The first of the letters which are to end the story 
of her life, will be selected from those written on 
her " blind slate," while she was abroad. 

TO THE HATNES. 

Windermere Lake, 
Bowess, Crown Hotel, June 28, 1884. 

From Chester we came to the Lake Country, and 
have been here all the week. Oh, the heavenly beauty 
of these lakes ! I don't wonder that poets congregated 
here. We are on Windermere, the largest and most 
beautiful. I will not attempt to tell you of its velvety 
shores — its " scaurs " — its dales. It is redolent all 
over with the memories of Wordsworth, Southey, Kit 
North (whose summer cottage is within walking distance 
of our hotel), Hartley Coleridge, Harriet Martineau, 
Dr. Arnold, and a host of others. Furness Abbey, the 
second grandest ruin in England, is about three hours 
away, and two days ago we all went there by steamer 
and train. Such a day! Heavenly in beauty, un- 
equalled in the emotions it excited. Think of my 
gathering moss from the stone effigy of a Knight of the 
Crusades — so indicated by his crossed legs. We dined 
in the hotel built over the abbot's house — the old 
mossy foundations being visible all round. The abbey 
is immense and indescribable ; such stone carvings, such 



LAST LETTERS 309 

perfect arches — such clustered pillars — such a stretch of 
nave ! I felt annihilated with the wonder of the whole 
thing. I enclose Mrs. Hayne some flowers gathered 
under the very foundations, and an ivy leaf pulled from 
beneath. It is splendidly draped with ivy. 

But yesterday was perhaps a day nearer my heart. 
"We went by steamer to Ambleside — Wordsworth's 
Ambleside — Southey's ; and such hills, such greenery, I 
never expect to see again. Then we took carriage and 
drove to Grasmere Lake, a lovely little gem. I stopped 
to see where Mrs. Hemans had domiciled, where Miss 
Martineau dwelt, and after lunching at Grasmere Hotel, 
sought out the church. I walked to Wordsworth's grave 
without being directed, and on reading his name alone 
on his stone, and Mary Wordsworth on his wife's, I am 
free to confess to a rush of tears. 

Dora Quillinan, his daughter's, and dear old Dorothy, 
whom Coleridge, you know, pronounced the grandest 
woman he had ever known. Suddenly turning, I read 
the name of poor Hartley Coleridge, and again I felt my 
eyes overflow. 

(Later.) 

I have dreamed of poor Amy Robsart among the 
walls of Kenilworth, and sat in Shakespeare's chair in 
the house in which he was born, and roved over grand 
Christ College and the galleries of the Bodleian Library 
at Oxford, and drunk my fill of London wonders. 

To-day we have explored every recess in Westminster 
Abbey — surely there never was such a pile erected to 
the glory and genius of — man ! I had been all over 
Holyrood a few weeks ago, and how strange it seemed 
to stand beside poor Mary Queen of Scots' tomb in 
Henry VII.'s chapelj I was at service on Sunday to 



310 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

hear Canon Farrar, at St. Margaret's, where Milton and 
Cromwell were married, and where Sir Walter Raleigh 
is buried. Every inch of this English ground is his- 
toric — every foot is instinct with immortal dust. I 
have been going blind almost over the grand collections 
in the National Gallery. Raphaels — Murillos — Rem- 
brandts — Rubens — Cuyps — Veroneses — Velasquez 

— Sir Joshua — Landseers — Turners — and a hundred 
others. Alas ! for all Ruskin says about Turner ! half 
of the Turner gallery is filled with incoherent splashes 

— many are absolutely grotesque. What a wonderful 
city this London is — five millions of people — a per- 
petual stream of seething humanity. (One of the most 
interesting portions of Westminster Abbey is the " Jeru- 
salem Chamber/' so rich in historic and sacred associa- 
tions. A few days ago the new version of the Old 
Testament was completed at its green-baise-covered- 
tressel table.) But I dare not try to jot a hundredth 
part of the things that have interested us all. 

On Lake Leman, Aug. 20. 
As I steam down this lovely lake, my dear friend, I 
take out my blind slate and scribble you a few lines, 
here on deck with Madame de StaeTs Coppet in sight. 
How historic every step in this old land is ! We have 
had the most charming and enchanting tour thro' Swit- 
zerland — entering it at Schauf hausen in the north, going 
straight through to Chamouny and Geneva. How shall 
I speak of our visit to " La Chute du Rhin " ! It was 
delicious beyond question. From there we went (our 
party of six — my Philadelphia brother and his wife 
being still in England, making a tour of the cathedral 
cities) to the Lake of the Four Cantons, stopping for 
several days at Lucerne, one of the most enchanting 



LAST LETTERS 311 

places I ever saw. These palatial hotels exceed any- 
thing I conceived of the luxury of travel; we have 
nothing like them in America — they are like palaces 
indeed, and one finds them in most of the great cities, 
on a princely scale. From Lucerne we made the ascent 
of Rhigi — and dined at a six-story Hotel on Rhigi- 
Culm ! Oh, the Alps upon Alps we saw from Rhigi's 
top! I dare not torment you with anything like de- 
scriptions, and I spare you my emotions. Nothing 
could exceed the exhilaration of our journey through 
Switzerland, mostly en voiture, which gave us com- 
mand of our own movements and time ; though we found 
it a most expensive mode of travel. 

We visited Hospenthal, high among the Alps — 
Fiesch — went through the St. Gothard Pass — and 
through Furka Pass, dining one day 8000 feet up the 
Alps ; went into ecstasies at the Rh6ne Glacier, which is 
only inferior in grandeur to Mt. Blanc, and far superior 
to the Mer de Glace ; passed over the Tete Noir, the 
most dangerous pass in Switzerland, and thence to 
Chamouny at the foot of Mt. Blanc. Mt. Blanc ! I 
will not touch it ! I could not make you see it thro' my 
lines, and you have read a thousand descriptions of it. 
I kept repeating over to myself Coleridge's hymn — re- 
alizing now its truth and splendor, as well as that of 
" thy bald, awful frown, oh sovran Blanc ! " 

Nothing on this marred earth can exceed in heavenly 
heights of sublimity this monarch among the mountains. 
Its immaculate purity makes it seem wholly heavenly, 
— belonging to the sky and not to earth. Geneva at- 
tracts us specially, as it is as old as Julius Csesar; I 
went all over Calvin's haunts yesterday, and as a good 
Presbyterian who believes in his Institutes, I sat in his 
venerable chair beneath his pulpit in his old cathedral 



312 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

(a fine one), and then we sought out the house in which 
he lived and died. The cathedral is Protestant, belong- 
ing to the French Church. In a day or two we expect 
to go to Paris, that " heaven of good Americans " ! but 
I don't expect to enjoy it as I did London. I don't care 
much about France, and am not enthused by French 
emotions. We will take a little more touring in Eng- 
land before we set sail, going to the Isle of Wight, and 
in October we expect to be back in Lexington ; which 
little sleepy place will seem very humdrum, I fear, after 
our exciting summer. 

TO THE SAME. 

Lexington, Oct. 20. 
My dear Friend, — It was extremely kind of you to 
write me so that your letter should welcome me as soon 
as I crossed my doorstep ten days ago or less. It made 
me realize that I was on my native heath again to see 
your familiar handwriting even while I did not dare 
read a line for myself. 

My Golden Summer is over and gone, and I '11 never 
have such another, as I surely never had such a one be- 
fore. It was splendid from first to last, even including 
the sea-sickness. I would willingly take it over again 
and start back next week, if I could go with the same 
choice party, — husband, son, sister, brothers, and sisters- 
in-law ; such a delicious set as we had ! I can't remem- 
ber from what point I sent you my last scribble, but our 
tour thro' Switzerland was the crowning delight of our 
summer. . . . My picture gallery of memory is hung 
henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness cannot 
blot or cause to fade. We declined all society while 
abroad, not being willing to forego sight-seeing. I did 



LAST LETTERS 313 

not look up my Kingsley friends, tho' I had a pressing 
invitation to visit them, but I am not one of those people 
who like to thrust their personality upon strangers. 

Nov. 9. 
I cannot answer your letter to-day. I write mainly to 
ask for Mr. Philip Marston's address, as I would like to 
tell him why I did not come to see him, when I was so 
near his house in London. When you write to him 
please tell him how I appreciate his kind mention of me 
in his letter to you. I hope his Wind Voices is making 
him still more popular than he already is. What a 
pathetic sketch of him that was, which appeared last 
spring in the Boston Literary World from the pen of 
Mrs. Moulton ! Such an accumulation of woes on one 
head I scarcely ever heard of. I would have been glad 
to see the poem you speak of as drawing forth such en- 
comiums from your literary friends ; you know I can 
read nothing myself, but I could have it read to me. 
You are a marvel of a man to go on working under the 
pressure of ill-health. When there comes to me the 
" malice of circumstance," as Swinburne calls it, I suc- 
cumb at once, proving that as I faint " in the day of 
adversity, my strength is small. " I send your son a 
bunch of London Literary Worlds, in one of which he 
will find his own name, marred, however, by a fling at 
Americans, which English literary people can't help 
giving. I did see such funny specimens of English 
democracy when I was abroad; I could make you 
laugh by the hour, and wonder too, by telling you of 
sights I witnessed at Hyde Park and in the Albert 
Memorial Chapel and St. George's Chapel, but I have 
no room for more. 

Ever yours, 

M. J. P. 



314 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

The correspondence with Mr. Hayne, which had 
for almost twenty years brightened Mrs. Preston's 
life, comforting and enriching it as shadows length- 
ened, and friends were called away from her side, 
is now seen to be drawing to a close : the last let- 
ter may be given to show how strong and tender 
this friendship was, till the great Silence fell be- 
tween the two. 

TO MRS. HAYNE. 

Lexington, Va. June 24, '86. 
My dear Mrs. Hayne, — I think it is kind above 
everything in you to have written to me when your 
hands were so full of anxiety and work. I got your 
postal announcing your departure to Macon, and had 
not known of your return until your letter came yester- 
day ; I thought much of you during your absence, and 
wondered how Mr. Hayne was standing all the excite- 
ment he would be destined to encounter. It could hardly 
be wondered at that after such a drain upon his mental 
and physical energies, he should have had somewhat of 
a relapse on getting home. But it discouraged me very 
much, nevertheless, that there should be any such giving 
in as you speak of. I do trust that there has been no 
return of his trouble, and that it is nothing more than 
the reaction after so much movement and excitement ; it 
must have been exceedingly gratifying to be so warmly 
and affectionately received by the people of his own 
adopted State. I think no poet in America has ever 
received a greater number of ovations than your hus- 
band ; the recognition of him as the Laureate of the 
South, and as the best Nature poet in America, has been 
grudgingly delayed, but surely it has fully come at last ; 
and there must be to him a satisfaction in it inex- 



LAST LETTERS 315 

pressible, that at last his merits have wrung from North 
and South the acknowledgment they should gracefully 
and spontaneously have yielded long ago. But there 
the truth stands, the recognition has come, the poet has 
been crowned, and everywhere he is acknowledged. 
This fact must be some compensation to lighten the 
weary hours of sickness : he has reached the goal 
towards which he set his life, even if he should now drop 
his pen from his hand, and write no more. Let us 
thank God for this, and feel that his hand-to-hand, 
stout struggle with destiny has been a successful one, 
and that nothing henceforth can take him down from 
the pedestal on which he stands ! 

And how much of all this, my dear Mrs. Hayne, is 
due to you ! If you had not been the brave-hearted 
woman you are, the struggle might not have been so 
manfully maintained ; I am sure Mr. Hayne feels this, 
and is willing to share with you half his fame : it is you 
who have helped to make a shrine of Copse Hill ; and you 
as well as he deserved to have your name engraven on 
the silver service received at Macon. 

I hope you will bo. able to keep all visitors away from 
Mr. Hayne, until he entirely recovers, and gains a little 
strength again. But I need not warn you to do this, for 
have you not been the guardian angel who has always 
stood between him and the rough side of life ? 

How bitterly I regret the failure of all my endeavors 
to have you pay me a visit three years ago ; to think 
that we should be friends so long, and yet never have 
met ! And that we should meet now seems so unlikely. 
But we cannot have things our way in this world ; as 
Jean Ingelow says in her last letter to me, " I shall 
hope to meet, know, and love you in the world beyond." 
Will that have to content us ? Or shall we hope to meet 



316 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

and know each other this side ? If the meeting does n't 
come soon, I fear I shall be too blind to see you. . . . 

The answer to this letter came in the handwriting 
of a stranger : the poet whom Mrs. Preston had 
delighted to call the Southern Laureate, had en- 
tered into rest. 

But new friends came into the life thus bereft, 
one especially, who, like Mr. Hayne, was never to 
see Mrs. Preston face to face, but whose sweet let- 
ters, full of enthusiastic admiration and affection, 
made bright many an otherwise sad and dull hour. 

There came in the mail one day of the year 1883 
a tender, appreciative letter from a reader away up 
in Maine, whose heart had been comforted in sor- 
row by Mrs. Preston's sweet song. The letter was 
promptly answered, and a correspondence sprang 
into existence which proved an infinite solace to 
Mrs. Preston as long as she lived. 

This unseen friend, " S. G.," was herself a 
woman of wide culture and decided poetic talent ; 
Mrs. Preston used to say that her charming letters 
stood well a comparison with Madame de Sevigne's. 

A letter or two from Mrs. Preston to " S. G.," 
belonging to each of these latter periods of her re- 
maining years, will perhaps give the story of those 
years in the simplest and most vivid way. There 
is little more, as has been said, that can interest 
the reader in the record of this life : the infirmities 
of old age bore heavily upon the sensitive spirit, 
and the sunset of life was not free from clouds. 
But there was much, on the other hand, to call for 



LAST LETTERS 317 

thanksgiving and rejoicing ; when her own home 
was broken up, the homes of her children and step- 
children were opened to her with loving welcome, 
and in the home of her eldest son, where she spent 
her last five years, she had everything done for her 
comfort and happiness that love and duty could 
compass. 

One of the pile of letters (which this friend from 
Maine has kindly put at the disposal of Mrs. Pres- 
ton's biographer) has been given earlier in this 
chapter, in the record of travel ; the first extract 
now given goes back a year, to September, 1883. 

to s. G. 
Lexington, Virginia, Sept. 9th, 1883. 

What angel prompted you, my dear unseen friend, 
to write me the lovely letter I received from you a few 
days ago ? I had just gotten home from my summer 
jauntings, to find it awaiting me here, and only the day 
before I left the house of the friend I was visiting, it 
had required all her Christian tact and skill to raise my 
depressed and discouraged spirits. " My work is done," 
I had said. " The Master has taken away all power 
of doing anything further out of my hands. I can only 
be a burden to others." Here she stopped me with — 
" Does God exact day labor, light denied ? " But I was 
not consoled. 

By way of explanation let me say, that for nearly 
two years I have been under the care of distinguished 
oculists for eyes that have been overstrained for many 
years — since I was 24 years old. I injured them by 
over-use after a severe illness, and they have never been 
in a normal condition t since. For 7 or 8 years I never 
read a book or wrote a letter. Then I gradually re- 



318 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

turned to a partial use of them, but overtaxing them two 
years since fatally, as I fear, I have been condemned to 
the use of the grooved apparatus used by the blind, as 
the only means of conveying my thoughts to correspond- 
ents, and am cut off from all literary work. For that 
period I have not seen even a chapter in the Bible. I 
am just back from consulting one of the best specialists, 
and he has given me small encouragement. He said 
guardedly that my condition " did not necessarily pro- 
mise blindness." I at least am left with that terrible 
fear before me. 

Do excuse so long an exordium — it was needful to 
explain why your letter came at a moment when I needed 
something to lighten the gloom of my despair. When 
you tell me that my small writings have helped and con- 
soled you in sorrow, surely I myself may draw some 
comfort therefrom ! I have never given myself up to 
literature as my life work, being too busy a wife, mother, 
friend, &c, for that luxury. I have been for many years 
the mistress of too large a household to be able to com- 
mand the wide margins of leisure that go to the making 
of a literary life. 

Have you ever read the Dedication to my volume of 
verse, " Old Song and New " ? There, in a sonnet's 
breadth, is an account of the way I have always written. 
And to think that the poems that would have utterance, 
and that were crowded mainly into some little interval 
not at the moment filled with other more imperative 
things, should have helped you away in Maine ! That 
— that is a consolation to me now, in my enforced hours 
of idleness, when heart, health, and spirits all fail me. 
I must say that I am not blind now, but have the ap- 
prehension scaring me. I lie hours sometimes on my 
sofa, not able to do anything, not even thinking in my 



LAST LETTERS 319 

despondency, only " eating my own heart." Yet I have 
husband and sons left me — a sweet home, and friends 
ready to soothe. Am I not unreasonable — unchris- 
tian ? Yea, surely, " Can God suffice for heaven and 
not for earth ? " 

Therefore I thank you for your letter, which my hus- 
band read to me with wet eyes, and then turned and 
kissed me for the testimony it furnished. 

May 15, 1886. 
Your touching and pretty picture came to me on 
Easter, so that I had your kindness present before my 
mind. It is a lovely picture, executed with so much 
artistic taste, and I thank both you and your friend for 
it ; its motto is indeed one that commends itself to every 
Christian heart. If "I hold, and I am held," then I 
need have no fear for the tumultuous dash of this world's 
currents. So you see I thank you for the motto, which 
I will try to make my own from this Easter till next 
Easter, if I should live to see it. It was very sweet of 
you to think of me in this way ; how many kind friends 
I have whom I have never seen, who remember me in a 
similar manner ! I wish I could send you some of Jean 
Ingelow's pleasant letters, or some of the still more de- 
lightful ones of Mrs. Kingsley and her daughter Rose, 
or some most agreeable society ones from the blind Eng- 
lish poet, Philip Bourke Marston ; now if you were my 
neighbor I would hand them all over to you. I am not 
fortunate in having literary people around me, techni- 
cally so called, but I have plenty of professional and 
cultivated ones ; for this little town of ours, of two or 
three thousand inhabitants, has been a college town for 
a hundred years, and of course that gives its character 
to the people, for we* have a university and a college 



320 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

besides here, — a military one, the " West Point of 
the South," and military movements are quite a feature 
among us, and have been for more than forty years. 

I hope you will have a pleasant summer in your Maine 
home, and that you will not suffer from the heat, as we 
do in more Southern latitudes. We were very much 
surprised in going abroad two years ago, to find so many 
respectable people in the second cabin going back to 
Europe ; my husband, who went among them a good deal, 
asked them why they were going back, as that seemed 
the wrong turn for foreigners of that class ; many of 
them said they were going merely to escape the heats 
of the American summer. I feel even now like wishing 
I was a second class passenger on one of the great steam- 
ers of the White Star Line, if only thereby I might 
escape " the heats of the American summer ! " One 
of my brothers with his family, from Charleston, S. C, 
took a cottage in the Adirondacks, and was there the 
entire summer ; every time they wrote us of their enjoy- 
able coolness, I grew envious. Like Thoreau, I think I 
would like to have an experience of the " Maine Woods." 

I and my beloved little amanuensis have been occupy- 
ing ourselves lately in weeding out from several books 
of mine, and collecting from portfolios, etc., and gather- 
ing from magazines, such poems as I call religious, with 
a view to putting them in one volume. Whether they 
will ever go to press, I do not know, but it seems to me 
there is vitality enough in them to give them a circu- 
lation among Christian readers. 

Have you read Stedman's " Poets of America " ? I 
think it very inferior to his " Victorian Poets," and I do 
not fall in at all with much of his criticism ; think of his 
devoting forty or fifty pages to Walt Whitman ! Have 
you read Henry Drummond's book, " Natural Law in 



LAST LETTERS 321 

the Spiritual World " ? It is very suggestive and exalt- 
ing. 

In the fall of 1889 Mrs. Preston's widowed step- 
daughter came back with her children to make her 
home in Lexington, only a stone's throw from the 
Preston homestead. 

" Let it console you, my dear," the stepmother 
said, " to think what a comfort you and your chil- 
dren are going to be to your father and myself, for 
the rest of our lives." 

" The rest of our lives ! " How closely the veil 
hangs over the future to the very end ! Before six 
months had passed, Colonel Preston's family knew 
that it was only a question of weeks, when he should 
leave forever the beloved hills of his boyhood's and 
manhood's home. 

It was a clear and peaceful sunset to a life spent 
in God's service. For weeks before the end came, 
the dying man lay on a couch which was placed 
on a covered upper porch, and gazed in silence — a 
serene and radiant silence — at the beauty of earth 
and sky. He was too weak for much conversation ; 
and by gentle signs we knew that he wished to be 
left alone — alone with God. 

When he did speak, his manner was not only 
cheerful, it was often merry ; and many a smile 
kept company with our restrained tears, at his witty 
speech. 

But for the most part he held his peace ; now 
and then reading from God's Word, which lay be- 
side him ; and now and then from the life of Dr. 



322 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Archibald Alexander, which was always laid with 
his Bible. 

Only a few days before his death he rallied, — by 
a determined effort of will, his doctor said, — called 
his children and grandchildren together to a family 
breakfast, and himself conducted family worship. 
His oldest grandson's oldest child was only a baby 
in arms, but the great-grandfather insisted upon 
her presence at this service. " Never mind if the 
darling is restless," he said ; " I want her to share 
the blessing I am going to ask from our covenant- 
keeping God upon me and mine." 

The oldest son of the family, a minister of the 
Gospel, read the selected chapter; the dying patri- 
arch made a glorious confession of faith, rendered 
praise for all the goodness and mercy that had 
crowned his days, humbly acknowledged his sins ; 
and said he felt no rapture in view of death ; only 
adoring gratitude for God's goodness in saving 
such a worthless sinner, and a perfect assurance 
that all would be well with him through eternity, 
because he belonged to Christ. 

We sang, with voices full of emotion, " O God 
of Bethel, by whose hand," and the old saint made 
a prayer that seemed to echo back to us from the 
gates of Heaven ; then he kissed each one, and 
went back to his couch on the porch, hardly to 
speak again on earth. 

A few days and nights more of waiting, and then 
Mrs. Preston's correspondents received this little 
card : — 

"Entered into rest, July 15, at his home in 



LAST LETTERS 323 

Lexington, Va., Colonel John T. L. Preston, after 
many months of weary illness, through which he 
bore himself with the noblest Christian resigna- 
tion." 

Next we find a dictated page, thanking " S. G." 
for her loving sympathy, and nothing more until 
the beginning of the next year. 

to s. G. 
Lexington, Virginia, Jan. 13, 1891. 

My dear Miss G., — I have your kind, sympathetic 
note, written at Christmas, and I thank you for the 
Christmas prayer which you tell me you offered up for 
me ; may your prayers be accepted for yourself and for 
me. 

My heart thanks you likewise for the sympathy you 
express in my grievous loss, but since that mournful 
mid-summer desolation, other trials still have come upon 
me. I was obliged to give up my lovely home of thirty 
years, and break up a thousand holy associations con- 
nected with it ; it is to be sold, and even now its grounds 
are being divided into building lots. This tearing up of 
such sacred ties proved too much of an added sorrow, 
and resulted in a spell of nervous illness, which has laid 
me on my back ever since ; even now I cannot walk, 
although I am better, and slowly improving, I hope. I 
was to have taken a house in Baltimore, and my large 
library and furniture were all packed, waiting transpor- 
tation in the fall, but I am unequal to housekeeping now, 
and probably shall never have a home of my own again, 
but will spend what remains to me of my pilgrimage 
with my son, who is a physician there. I am with kind 
friends here, and have no expectation of being able to be 



324 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

moved before spring. You may well imagine that time 
drags heavily with me often, unable as I am to use my 
eyes ; but I have had a long and happy life, and I dare 
not murmur at the sad Providences that have beset me 
during this last year. If they only have the effect of 
fitting me for the home of many mansions, from which 
we shall go out no more forever, why should I com- 
plain, or fill my heart with vain regrets ? You tell me 
that you have known what it is to bury your dearest, and 
break up your earthly home, so that in some measure 
you can sympathize with me. To us who mourn our 
departed, and our lost treasures, earth seems a sad and 
dreary place ; but then how many happy homes and 
happy hearts there are left in it for all ! So it becomes 
us to say with our dear Elizabeth Browning, — 

" Through dearth and death, through fire and frost, 
With emptied arms and treasure lost, 
We praise thee, while the days go on." 

I can send you but a brief note to-day, but it will 
suffice to tell you that I appreciate your kind remem- 
brance of me. So with all good wishes for your health 
and happiness through the coming year, believe me, my 
dear Miss G., most affectionately yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 



CHAPTER XII 

LAST DAYS 

The two years following her husband's death, 
Mrs. Preston spent in the home of her stepdaugh- 
ter, in Lexington, Va. She had suffered a slight 
shock of paralysis (although her letters do not call 
it by that name) in the first sad months of her 
great bereavement, and she never walked again, 
except to take a few steps across the floor with a 
crutch or cane, and leaning on a strong arm. But 
her wheel chair was rolled out to the wide porch 
every good day, summer and winter, and during 
pleasant weather most of the day was thus spent 
in the open air. 

She became, of course, the centre of this house- 
hold. Each member of the family took turns in 
reading aloud to her (through the long ear trumpet 
which her increasing deafness now made entirely 
necessary), and we used to tell her that she equaled 
a juggler with his balls, in being able to keep the 
thread of three or four different books at once. A 
sweet girl amanuensis came to her for several hours 
every morning, and this kept her in touch with her 
widely scattered family and kindred, while a steady 
stream of visitors, her neighbors and friends, en- 
livened her days. 



326 MAKGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

In the last weeks of 1892, Mrs. Preston made 
the dreaded journey to Baltimore, with the help 
of her two sons and her maid, and from that time 
until her death she was domesticated in the family 
of her oldest son, Dr. George J. Preston of Balti- 
more. In her letters from Baltimore she boasts 
very prettily of the gifts and accomplishments of 
her charming Leipsic daughter-in-law, and of her 
two grandchildren, " cherubs beautiful enough to 
have been models for Raphael — a constant source 
of enjoyment to me." 

Mrs. Preston became the centre of this Balti- 
more home, as she had been of the Lexington one, 
and every member of the family brought to her in- 
valid's chair whatever could interest and please 
her. She would not see strangers, but there were 
enough old friends and kinsfolk in the city to give 
her many sweet hours of sociability, and her second 
son, Herbert, who was practicing law in Baltimore, 
devoted himself to her in daily ministry. 

Her only sister, her brothers and their families, 
made constant journeys to Baltimore, to see her. 
Rarely has one member of a family been the ob- 
ject of such tender solicitude, such unceasing at- 
tention, such affectionate demonstration. 

And one of the sweetest and brightest blessings 
of her life God had kept for these declining 
years. In an earlier chapter of this volume, the 
reader found a letter (dated Lexington, Va.) to 
Mrs. Preston's dear friend, Professor E. F. McCay, 
alluding to the birth of a little daughter, whom 
Mr. McCay had named for Mrs. Preston's mother, 



LAST DAYS 327 

" Julia Junkin." How unexpectedly crossed are 
the paths by which our Heavenly Father leads us ! 
This friendship struck root first in Easton, Penn., 
grew apace while the Junkins lived in German- 
town, was tenderly cherished during the quarter 
of a century that Mrs. Preston lived in Virginia, 
while Mr. McCay was engaged in educational work 
in Georgia ; but its sweetest blossom flowered into 
beauty during those years of decline in Baltimore, 
when the " Julia Junkin " of the Lexington letter 
brought the fragrance of her sweet presence into 
the sad old life, and became the daily companion, 
amanuensis, and comforter of her father's dearest 
friend. 

A few more letters written from the Baltimore 
home will end the story of Mrs. Preston's life. 

TO A. DEF. 

819 North Charles Street. 

Mv darling A., — Am I answering your kind letter 
too soon ? I was so glad to get it, for letters here in my 
new surroundings come like the voice of a friend to one 
in a strange land. My surroundings are all so different 
from what they have been, that I feel very much as if 
I were transplanted to another sphere. In my old room 
at Elizabeth Allan's, I looked out upon a range of most 
beautiful mountains, of great stretches of woodland and 
green pastures. Here my large airy room faces brick 
walls and housetops, and when I sit at the library win- 
dows, I only see throngs of passers-by, all of whom are 
strangers to me. But I have my compensations, and am 
only too thankful that I am surrounded by my sons and 
daughter and little grandchildren, all of which circum- 



328 MARGARET JUNK1N PRESTON 

stances are naturally to me a great delight. It is an in- 
expressible comfort to feel that I have my doctor beside 
me all the time, and I can call upon him any moment. 
And then the children are a source of constant amuse- 
ment to me, for they spend a great deal of time, when 
they are not out of doors, in my room. They are very 
merry little things, and it is not easy to be low-spirited 
or morose or despairing in their presence. They both 
have the prettiest curly red heads, and very white com- 
plexions. The red heads are pretty now, as they flit like 
birds about my room, but I should be sorry to have 
them red-headed when they grow up. George is a 
beautiful child, very gentle and docile ; Margaret is 
fuller of life, with a very bright face and invariably the 
mistress in their plays and quarrels. Yet it is pretty to 
see her go up and kiss her brother when she has made 
him cry. E. has seen a great deal of the world, and has 
had a very varied life. Last night she was describing 
her life in an old Bohemian castle, built in twelve hun- 
dred. To hear her was like reading a page of a medi- 
aeval romance. She is one of the busiest people I know ; 
G.'s trouble is that he says she never sits five minutes 
with her hands before her doing nothing. She is a very 
systematic and neat housekeeper, and attends carefully 
to all details. 

J. tells me that she has been hearing the missionary 
Paton, whom the New Hebrides cannibals did not eat up, 
tell his experiences and it was a great treat. I have not 
had anything read to me lately except papers and mag- 
azines, and I feel as if a great deal of literature had 
swept by me. I feel too old to be greatly interested in 
the new writers, — I leave them for the next generation. 
I have so large a correspondence that I have to dictate 
four or five letters every day to keep even with it, and 



LAST DAYS 329 

this is somewhat unprofitable. As to health I am about 
as usual ; I do not walk any better, nor has the battery- 
been of much benefit. So you see, my dear, I have 
need of patience, for it has not yet had its perfect work. 
Many strangers have called to see me, but T have made 
E. receive them for me. Conceive of me as being in- 
vited to dinners and receptions ! Now tell me all about 
yourself — how you are occupying your time — what 
books you are reading, and what pictures you are 
painting. And now, my dear, I must say good-by: 
God bless you; with love to Z. and C, ever yours 
affectionately, M. J. P. 

to s. G. 

Nov. 13, 1893. 

My dear Miss G., — You see that I am not able 
to write with mine own hand, but a dear friend takes my 
place, hence this letter. I had no idea till I looked at 
the postmark, that your letter was received so long ago, 
but I spent the summer with my son's family at a pretty 
cottage in Howard Co., Md., and so was not where I 
could answer your letter, but it was a delightful one, as 
I realized by having my friend just read it over to 
me. Where we were was a pretty wooded place, and 
we had various friends to visit us, but I was so much of 
an invalid all summer as not to be able to walk about 
except with the help of my waiting woman. 

I don't love town life ; as I sit here at the library 
window, this rainy day, and watch the people plodding 
along under their umbrellas, I feel as if city life was 
intensely dreary. I thank you for giving me a pleasant 
picture of your summer, and I was interested in all you 
told me about your sea trips. I have Celia Thaxter's 
books, and like all sjie writes. She sent me her photo- 
graph some time ago, and what a good earnest face it 



330 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

is! She has made the Isles of Shoals quite classic. 
Some of our household were at the Fair, and I have 
hardly a friend who was n't there. 

I am glad you told me about the little book concerning 
Lady Stanley, as I am interested in everything that re- 
lates to the Stanleys. The Tait books are interesting 
but sad. I have dabbled very little in literature this 
summer, and have had to decline all invitations to write, 
on account of my nervousness. Pray God, my dear 
friend, that you may never know what this nervous 
prostration is. It is worse than any physical pain, and 
I do not seem to grow much better of it. It depresses 
me painfully and renders me indifferent to almost every- 
thing. Some of my friends press novels upon me, but 
they have become in a measure distasteful, and don't 
amuse me, and although I might see many visitors, I 
feel quite unfitted for the faces of strangers, and limit 
myself to a small circle of friends. 

Tell me about your Princeton friend when you write, 
did she ever recover ? I was interested in what you 
told me of her, especially her beautiful acquiescent 
spirit. I cannot pretend to give you an answer to your 
long, delightful letter, but then remember under what 
limitations I write. I enclose a bit of Philip Marston's 
writing ; poor fellow, I always think of him with sad- 
ness. And now, my dear friend, write to me whenever 
you find it a Christian charity to comfort a poor invalid, 
for your letters are always delightful to me ; and be- 
lieve me yours as ever, M. J. P. 

to A. DEF. 

819 N. Chables St., Nov. 20, '93. 
My darling A., — You won't believe me when I tell 
you how much I enjoyed your last letter, because I have 



LAST DAYS 331 

not answered it ; for the reason that while I was in the 
country during the summer, I had no amanuensis, and 
so my correspondence was largely curtailed. I hope you 
had an enjoyable summer. It was very agreeable to me 
to be with G.'s family in their country cottage, but it did 
not make any sensible change in my physical condition, 
and I am not able to walk a bit better than I did six 
months ago ; but I am trying to reconcile myself to the 
fact that at my age I am not to look for recuperation, 
since the bottom of the hill is so near. And I repeat to 
myself with a full consciousness of its truth, that verse 
from Gray's Elegy, — 

" For who to dumb f orgetf ulness a prey 

This pleasing-, anxious being e'er resigned — 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind ? " 

How much it takes to wean us from this beautiful world, 
which is yet so full of sorrow and suffering! I am 
ashamed to think how I cling to it, notwithstanding all 
the warnings I have had to be ready to leave it ; but I 
don't think there ever was anybody who shrank from 
death more than I. It has " held me in bondage " all 
my life. I think if I had the assurance of readiness, 
I would not be so tormented with fear ; but I will not 
write in a sombre mood, or you will not welcome my 
letter. But my dear, you will never know how tortured 
I am with nervousness; the sword of Damocles sus- 
pended by a hair is over my head. You know from 
experience what the fear of paralysis is, though it never 
with you took hold of the spiritual side of your nature, 
as it has with me. If I could be persuaded that all my 
doubts and fears arose from physical causes, I could 
bear them. Have you any sympathy with such troubles, 
from any experience* of your own ? 



332 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

It was a great relief to me to hear brother G. say- 
in one of his letters, that he did not allow his numbness 
to give him any worry, he was perfectly willing to leave 
it all in God's hands. Did J. tell you that the latest 
word from them is, that they may go to Cairo ? I was 
glad to know that they had a thought of dipping into 
the Orient ; it is what I have been urging them to do, 
during their last two or three trips. Europe has got to 
be such a beaten track with them ! . . . I hope you have 
fair access to new books ; how they do pour from the 
press ! I often wonder what Solomon would say if he 
could come back to earth, as he complained of the mul- 
tiplication of books even in those old days ; but I believe 
you never tire of new books. I am heartily sick of 
novels, and won't allow them to be read to me, though 
now and then they compel me to listen to a story by a 
new writer. But I am spinning out my uninteresting 
letter. Give my best love to them all, and remember 
that I am always delighted to hear from you. 
Always your loving friend, 

M. J. P. 

TO S. G. 
819 N. Charles St., Oct. 22, '94. 
My dear kind Friend, — I am suffering to-day so 
much from nervous exhaustion, that it is anything but 
the right thing to attempt even a note to you, but I may 
get worse and not be able to acknowledge your goodness, 
so I will do it while my friend is here beside me, to 
write for me. How shall I thank you for all your 
thoughtful kindness in taking so much trouble ; what 
trouble you did take, in collecting these memorials from 
so many different sources, and how greatly obliged am I 
that you should be willing to take all this trouble ! But 



LAST DAYS 333 

much as I appreciate all of this, and feel your great 
goodness in doing it for me, its value is greatly out- 
weighed by the gift of the little book about Lady Au- 
gusta Stanley. I have always taken a great interest in 
Lady Augusta, and these reminiscences have only stimu- 
lated it. I thank you for the good the brochure has 
done me, even though it is meagre to a fault. What is 
said is so to the point, and shows Lady Stanley to have 
been such an admirable character, that one feels griev- 
ously disappointed that these memorials are all so brief. 
The author might have given us so much more, and such 
a beautiful character deserves to be set before the world 
in large proportions of splendid womanhood. After 
having it read to me, I sent over to the library for my 
copy of the Life of the Prince Consort, hoping that there 
I might find something more about her twenty years of 
life with the Queen. I did find a good deal about Lady 
Augusta Bruce, but no dealing with details, only added 
testimony to her beautiful unselfishness, and ever con- 
stant helpfulness. I had stood at her grave in West- 
minster Abbey, and realized how much the Dean had 
lost, in losing her. Their effigies lie side by side in 
a little chapel, with their hands folded and their eyes 
turned heavenward. 

to s. G. 

819 N. Charles St., May 22, '96. 
My dear Miss G., — My dear friend Mrs. B., has 
been absent at Atlantic City, so that my letters have 
greatly accumulated, and as nervous prostration has 
almost made an end of me, and I am not able even to 
dictate much, I have asked her to copy part of a letter 
which she has just sent off to Mrs. Dodge, which tells 
of a visit from Miss'Kingsley, as it is just what I would 
have repeated to you. 



334 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

It is only two weeks till our appointed time arrives 
for going to Mt. Top, where we spent four months last 
summer, and though I shudder at the thought of going 
188 miles down into Virginia, I trust I may get there 
alive. The Dr.'s family go with me. As I cannot carry 
my amanuensis with me, I will not be able to communi- 
cate with you this summer, for I am so blind now as not 
to be able to write my own name. I hope you are com- 
fortably settled at your home ; lest you should not be, I 
will send this to N. God bless and keep you safe. Pray 
for me that if this is to be my last summer, I may go 
to that home from whence there is no more any going 
out. Always affectionately yours, 

M. J. P. 

EXTRACT FROM THE LETTER TO MRS. DODGE. 

I want to tell you of an unexpected pleasure that came 
to me last week, just in the midst of our hottest spell 
of weather. You have probably seen by the papers that 
Miss Rose Kingsley has been visiting in America. She 
has been searching for me, but only knew that I had left 
Lexington, and did not know that I was in Baltimore. 
She has a cousin living here, a graduate of Girton Col- 
lege, Oxford, who is married to a Baltimorean and has 
a beautiful home on the edge of the city. Miss Kings- 
ley was invited by the ladies' literary club, " the Arun- 
del," to read a paper on Art before them. My daugh- 
ter-in-law, who is one of the founders of the club, met 
her there, and when Miss Kingsley heard who she was, 
she expressed great pleasure at finding me. 

My daughter arranged to give her a luncheon, but 
when she and the Doctor called on her to invite her, 
they found her with engagements five deep. They were 
only able to arrange that she should take some cake and 



LAST DAYS 335 

wine with us between two afternoon receptions. I had 
a delightful interview with her, she was so cordial that 
I felt as if I had known her all my life. She kissed 
me repeatedly on both cheeks and forehead, and told 
me how bitterly she and her mother regretted not seeing 
us when we were at Leamington. They had been guests 
of the Queen at Hampton Court a short time before, and 
so missed us. She was most profuse in her thanks for 
the little acts of literary service I had at various times 
rendered her, and you may be sure we held delightful 
converse over a photograph which her mother had sent 
me several years ago. I have piles of the most beautiful 
letters Mrs. Kingsley wrote me, for sixteen years ; in- 
deed until her death, about two years ago. I would 
have been willing to have had an additional attack 
of nervous prostration rather than not have seen Miss 
Kingsley. We had much talk of the beautiful, ideal life 
at Eversley as given in her mother's classic Memoir, and 
she told me that the present Lord Tennyson had said to 
her that in writing his father's life, he had set that book 
before him as a model, but he said it was with a despair- 
ing feeling, as he felt he could never equal it. She pro- 
duced a fine impression here, so charming and cordial 
was she. I thought you would enjoy hearing of her, 
hence this rather long talk. 

In March the friend in Maine received the fol- 
lowing note : — 

March 27, 1897. 
My dear Miss G., — It is with a sad heart that I 
return you the little book to-day, and send you this hur- 
ried line to say that your dear friend, Mrs. Preston, is 
slipping from us. Every breath seems to be her last. 
She was stricken with paralysis on Wednesday last, and 



336 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

has never regained her consciousness. She is very quiet 
and has been merely breathing for three days. We 
thank God for her unconsciousness, and rejoice to think 
of the great surprise awaiting her ; she, who never could 
feel herself worthy to be called His child. How soon 
her doubts are to be set at rest ! Dear old saint ! I 
hate to think of the future without her, though her most 
loving friend could not desire for her a longer life. You 
will see the notice in the papers, but I could not bear 
you to hear it only in that way. 

In great haste, yours, 

J. M. B. 

Two days after this was written, on Sunday, 
March 29, 1897, after almost a week of uncon- 
sciousness, Mrs. Preston exchanged time for eter- 
nity — the shadows of earth for the dawn of heaven. 

We could not have asked for her — she could 
not have asked for herself — a more blessedly 
gentle departure. Her best beloved were beside 
her day and night while the fitful breath lasted, — 
the two devoted sons, the sweet daughter-in-law 
who had cared for her so tenderly ; her two pre- 
cious grandchildren ; her only sister, and two young 
girls from her Lexington home, to whom also she 
had been a dearly loved " grandmother, " while 
the "J." of her love did not leave her until she 
had put a handful of violets upon her breast, as 
she lay in rapt calm in her coffin. 

In the last of her letters to " S. G." she had 
spoken of sending her a little poem, and she asked 
that her friend's friend should pray that its sen- 
timents might become the true feelings of the 






LAST DAYS 337 

writer's heart. This poem, " Euthanasia," with a 
word or two as to its birth, may fitly end the story 
of the poet's life. 

A few years before Mrs. Preston's death, her 
stepdaughter (then visiting her in Baltimore) 
came to her side in the fireglow of a wintry twi- 
light, and sitting close to her chair, that she might 
put her lips to the invalid's ear, and dispense with 
the ear trumpet, said, " Mamma, I have something 
sweet to tell you ; my friend Mrs. Hunt spent last 
evening reading aloud to her family; she was as 
well and comfortable as usual ; she kissed each one 
good-night, with her accustomed fondness, and went 
to her own room ; this morning they went to her 
bedside to find her gone, leaving a beautiful smile* 
on the cold lips ! " 

The old Christian's tears glistened in the fire- 
light. " Oh, my dear," she said, " pray that my 
going, which cannot be far off, may be like that ! " 

It was in that very evening's twilight that she 
picked up her blind slate and wrote, — 

EUTHANASIA. 

With faces the dearest in sight, 
With a kiss on the lips I love best, 

To whisper a tender " Good-night," 
And pass to my pillow of rest. 

To kneel, all my service complete, 
All duties accomplished — and then 

To finish my orisons sweet 

With a trustful and joyous a Amen." 

And softly, when slumber was deep, 
Unwarned by a shadow before, 



338 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

On a halcyon billow of sleep 

To float to the Thitherward shore. 

Without a farewell or a tear, 

A sob or a flutter of breath, 
Unharmed by the phantom of Fear, 

To glide through the darkness of death ! 

Just so would I choose to depart, 
Just so let the summons be given ; 

A quiver — a pause of the heart — 
A vision of angels — then Heaven ! 

Her prayers — and ours — were answered. Just 
so gently, so painlessly, she went home. 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 
MARGARET J. PRESTON 

AN APPRECIATION 

By James A. Harrison, University op Virginia 

The old Valley of Virginia is a very delightful spot to 
be born in or to live in : it is one of the picture-places 
of the ancient Commonwealth, and whoever has the 
good fortune to have followed with childish or with 
aging eyes its mountain trails and its shimmering waters, 
is already half a poet — of infinite mood and memory, 
if not of actual metre and stanza. As the great vale 
sweeps down to Harper's Ferry from the green heights 
of the Alleghanies, full of their memories of "the 
Knights of the Golden Horseshoe " and of the Revolu- 
tionary times, it leaves behind many a cleft and gorge 
and lateral fissure in its sides, wherein nestle antique 
little towns and hamlets that hover about a spire, or a 
manse, or cling lichenlike to the mountain slopes. Here 
a rushing mill-wheel crushes a mountain torrent into 
millions of sparkling jewels, mingling the beautiful 
with the prosaic utilitarian grinding of wheat ; yonder 
an old-time tavern and smithy remind the traveler of 
the time when Lord Fairfax and Surveyor Washington 
used to stage it in " chariots," with easy relay-distances 
of ten or twelve miles, up and down the Valley, in the 
times of the Indian wars ; and away on the mountain 



342 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

side one descries some " Mount Airy," or " Greenway 
Court," or plantation house of lordly name and lineage 
that announces the fact that the lower valley is peopled 
with the descendants of the gentry of colonial " Tide- 
water Virginia." 

Everywhere through this charmed region of great 
elevations and verdure-clad peaks and mountain ranges 
one meets with towns of old English name, — Win- 
chester, Woodstock, Staunton, — some of them strung 
together on the silver cord of the Shenandoah, others 
lying in the golden bowl of yellow wheat fields, and all 
of them filled with Old Virginia homes and hospitalities 
that have become proverbial for good cheer and heartiest 

welcome. 

In the greenest of these valleys 
By good angels tenanted, 

lies the little town of Lexington, named in honor of the 
Revolutionary Lexington, and now about one hundred 
and twenty-five years old. " The rude forefathers of 
the hamlet " sleep in its ivied and moss-covered ceme- 
tery, which looks out on a scene of beauty seldom sur- 
passed in the old or the new country. For four genera- 
tions and more a sturdy Scotch-Irish population, full 
of Macs and clan names found in Scottish history, have 
lived and labored in this picturesque region, descendants 
of the Covenanters, firm believers in Knox and Calvin, 
fine colonial and Revolutionary stock who drifted up the 
valley after they had landed in Philadelphia and mean- 
dered through Pennsylvania and Maryland, finding in 
these beautiful uplands a reminiscence of green Erin 
and bonnie Scotland. Everywhere they established 
their farms and homes, built kirk and manse, erected 
mill and hostelry, bringing along the parson and the 
schoolmaster, bell and book ; till soon the whole valley 



APPENDIX 343 

rang with the hum of hammer and anvil, church bell 
and hymn, spelling book and "Thursday meetin'." 
Communities clustered together ; a Lutheran population 
of post-Revolutionary origin came to mingle its curious 
Dutch blood and its queerer nomenclature with that of 
the Celts, and the valley, about 1850, at the close of the 
Mexican War, began to blossom like the rose. 

As early as 1784, Lexington began to flutter educa- 
tional wings and feel the spirit of progress astir in its 
breast. One of the learned Grahams established an 
academy near the town ; this academy, in the wave of 
patriotic enthusiasm that swept over the region in '76- 
'96, came to be rechristened " Liberty Hall ; " and the 
eyes of the good and great Washington being attracted 
to the fact, he left to the Hall in his will, fifty shares of 
James River and Kanawha Canal stock which had been 
presented to him by the State of Virginia. 

This stock became the nest-egg of " Washington Col- 
lege," which after the death of General Robert E. Lee, 
its first post-bellum president, clasped its name in a 
golden link with that of Lee, who had married the 
granddaughter of Martha Custis, and developed into 
the present " Washington and Lee University." 

Thus had one of the great educational institutions of 
Virginia and of the South grown up in a night — but in 
a night of a hundred years. 

Another one also came to be located in Lexington : 
the Virginia Military Institute, a foundation laid in 1839 
by General Francis H. Smith, an old West-Pointer, and 
Major J. T. L. Preston (afterwards colonel on Stone- 
wall Jackson's staff), husband of the subject of this 
sketch. 

These two institutions would mark any place with 
distinction, but all the more a little mountain town of 



344 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

three thousand inhabitants, inaccessible in the older days 
except by canal-boat or stage ride of twenty miles. 
There were times, just after the war, when men of 
national reputation like Lee, and Maury, and Preston 
Johnston, and Joynes, and Brooke, and Smith held 
chairs of physics and literature, mathematics and mod- 
ern languages in these twin institutions; there were 
times in Lexington, not many decades ago, when nearly 
a thousand young men frequented its Institute and its 
University and made the little town a lively and inter- 
esting place to dwell in. A gracious hospitality dis- 
tinguished the place ; scions of the first families settled 
there and built delightful homes ; churches and schools 
added themselves to the growing needs of the place ; 
the old Franklin Debating Society and Library drew 
the men together to read, discuss current questions, and 
hear lectures from eminent specialists ; and the College 
Debating Societies had their discussions, their magazines, 
their celebrations through the year, to garnish and em- 
broider the dull edges of collegiate life. 

And then the Commencements ! prolonged between 
"Institute Hill" and "College Campus," sometimes for 
a clear six weeks : balls, field sports, boat races, ad- 
dresses, dress parades, camp scenes, parties, receptions, 
entertainments of all sorts ; an unceasing inflow of 
strangers and outflow of diplomaed and graduated or 
" flunked and flustered " students and cadets. The town 
has gone through this annual whirl since 1784, doubled 
since 1840 ; and superadded to all this, it has become 
since 1871 the Mecca of all Southern pilgrims ; for here 
in the beautiful ivied chapel of the University lie the 
sacred remains of Robert Edward Lee and his family ; 
here is Lee House, where he lived and died, and here is 
the lovely gray stone Lee Memorial Church, from whose 



APPENDIX 345 

vestry he had just come when he sank to rise no more ; 
and here, at the other end of the town, is the old Presby- 
terian Cemetery, where a great bronze statue of Stone- 
wall Jackson surmounts his grave, and where lies John 
Letcher, war governor of Virginia, surrounded by a 
host of Confederate dead. 

Such were the surroundings in which Margaret J* 
Preston passed the happiest days of her life, from 1848 
to 1892. More delightful surroundings for a sensitive 
literary nature like hers could not have been imagined : 
a nature delighting in fine landscape scenes, impression- 
able to a degree to all the varying moods and whimsies 
of a mountain environment, and thrilling with Eolian 
music at the touch of beauty. 

In other respects, too, this fortunate woman was most 
fortunately placed : her father, the Rev. Dr. Junkin, 
was a distinguished Presbyterian minister who had been 
president of Miami University, Ohio, and Lafayette 
College, Easton, Penn., now president of Washington 
College ; and soon she was to marry Major John T. L. 
Preston, a scion of one of the most high-born Virginia 
families, jointly with General Francis H. Smith, founder 
of the Virginia Military Institute, professor of Latin 
and modern languages in this institution, and intimate 
friend and (later) aide-de-camp to Stonewall Jackson. 

Her social position and surroundings were thus of the 
most influential and refined : nothing was lacking to 
make her supremely happy, and an abundance of this 
world's goods added its share to the other blessings with 
which Providence had environed her. 

Major (afterwards Colonel) Preston was a typical 
Virginia gentleman of the olden times : urbane, cultured, 
affable, aristocratic, straight as an arrow, passionately 
fond of dogs and horses and hunting, a great reader, 



346 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

stern and unyielding to wrong, proud as Lucifer in mat- 
ters of personal honor, a genealogist of the first water, 
with a pedigree stretching far into Merrie England, 
every leaf and branch of which he had at his finger- 
ends; he possessed a tender, noble nature that en- 
wrapped his rugged qualities as the Tuscan grape en- 
twines and festoons the towering elm. 

His union with such a nature as Margaret J. Preston's 
(just turned of thirty) was indeed an ideal one : strength 
and sweetness, power and gentleness, pride and humility, 
poetry and prose combined in this marriage as they did 
in that of the Brownings. Colonel Preston was a fine 
lecturer, handling many subjects with a keen and polished 
style, teaching effectively large classes of young men at 
the Institute, a devoted Sunday-school teacher, and a 
ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church. Two of his 
sons became distinguished doctors of divinity in this 
faith, and the atmosphere of the Preston household was 
that of Christian peace and repose. 

In his early boyhood years in Richmond, Va., Colonel 
Preston had been an intimate friend of Edgar Allan 
Poe, and as Mrs. Preston told the writer, " learned his 
Horace out of the same book." The following account, 
taken from Ingram's " Life of Poe," recounts the friend- 
ship : — 

Although I was several years Poe's junior, we sat together 
at the same form for a year or more at a classical school in 
Richmond, Virginia. Our master was John Clarke, of Trinity 
College, Dublin. At that time his school was one of highest 
repute in the metropolis. Master Clarke was a hot-tempered, 
pedantic, bachelor Irishman ; but a Latinist of the first order, 
according to the style of scholarship of that date, he unques- 
tionably was. I have often heard my mother amuse herself 
by repeating his pompous assurance that in his school her 
boy should be taught only the pure Latin of the Augustan 



APPENDIX 347 

age ! It is due to his memory to say, that if her boy was 
not grounded in his rudiments, it was not the fault of his 
teacher. What else we were taught, I have forgotten ; but 
my drilling in Latin, even to its minutiae, is clear to my view 
as if lying on the surface of yesterday. 

Edgar Poe might have been at this time fifteen or sixteen, 
he being one of the oldest boys in the school, and I one of 
the youngest. His power and accomplishments captivated 
me, and something in me, or in him, made him take a fancy 
to me. In the simple school athletics of those days, when 
a gymnasium had not been heard of, he was facile princeps. 
He was a swift runner, a wonderful leaper, and what was 
more rare, a boxer with some slight training. I remember, 
too, that he would allow the strongest boy in the school to 
strike him with full force in the chest. He taught me the 
secret, and I imitated him, after my measure. It was to 
inflate the lungs to the uttermost, and at the moment of 
receiving the blow to exhale the air. It looked surprising, 
and was, indeed, a little rough ; but with a good breast-bone, 
and some resolution, it was not difficult to stand it. For 
swimming he was noted, being in many of his athletic pro- 
clivities surprisingly like Byron in his youth. There was no 
one among the schoolboys who would so dare in the midst 
of the rapids of the James River. I recall one of his races. 
A challenge to a foot race had been passed between the two 
classical schools of the city : we selected Poe as our cham- 
pion. The race came off one bright May morning at sun- 
rise, in the Capitol Square. Historical truth compels me to 
add that on this occasion our school was beaten, and we had 
to pay up our small bets. Poe ran well, but his competitor 
was a long-legged, Indian-looking fellow, who would have 
outstripped Atalanta without the help of the golden apples. 
Ah, how many of those young racers on Capitol Square that 
fair May morning and how many of the crowd that so eagerly 
looked on, are very still now ! 

In our Latin exercises in the school Poe was among the first 
— not first without dispute. We had competitors who fairly 
disputed the palm. Especially one — Nat Howard — after- 



348 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

wards known as one of the ripest scholars in Virginia, and 
distinguished also as a profound lawyer. If Howard was 
less brilliant than Poe, he was far more studious ; for even 
then the germs of waywardness were developing in the nas- 
cent poet, and even then no inconsiderable portion of his time 
was given to versifying. But if I put Howard as a Latinist 
on a level with Poe, I do him full justice. One exercise of 
the school was a favorite with Poe : it was what was called 
"capping verses." The practice is so absolutely obsolete 
now, at least in our country, that the term may require 
explanation. 

Before the close of school, all the Latinists, without regard 
to age or respective advancement in the language, were 
drawn up in a line for "capping verses ;" just as, in old- 
fashioned schools, all scholars had to take their place in the 
spelling-line before dismission. At the head of the line stood 
the best scholar, who gave from memory some verse of Latin 
poetry to be " capped ; " that is, he challenged all the line to 
give from memory another verse beginning with the same 
letter. Whoever was able to do this, took the place of 
the leader; and in his turn propounded another verse to be 
capped in like manner. This we called "simple capping." 
" Double capping " was more difficult, inasmuch as the re- 
sponding verse must both begin and end with the same letters 
as the propounded verse. To give an example, and at the 
same time to illustrate how a memory, like a sieve, may let 
through what is valuable, and yet retain in its reticulations 
a worthless speck, I recall a capping which, while I have for- 
gotten ten thousand things that would have been serviceable 
if remembered, comes back to me with distinctness after the 
lapse of so many years. 

Nat Howard stood at the head of the line, and gave out 
for double capping a verse beginning with d and ending 
with m. It passed Edgar Poe, it passed other good scholars, 
as well it might, until it reached me, a tyro, away down the 
line. To the surprise of everybody, and not less to my own, 
there popped into my mind the line of Virgil : — 

Ducite ab urbe doinum, mea carniiiia, ducite Daphnim ! 



APPENDIX 349 

And with pride and amazement I saw myself where I never 
was before and never was afterwards, — above Nat Howard 
and Edgar Poe. 

The practice looks absurd, and so it would be now. True, 
it stored the memory with many good quotations for ready 
use. But after the fashion of Master Clarke — a fashion 
brought from Trinity — this " capping verses " was much in 
vogue, and Edgar Poe was an expert at it. 

He was very fond of the Odes of Horace, and repeated 
them so often in my hearing that I learned by sound the 
words of many, before I understood their meaning. In the 
lilting rhythm of the Sapphics and Iambics, his ear, as yet 
untutored in more complicated harmonies, took special de- 
light. Two odes, in particular, have been humming in my 
ear all my life since, set to the tune of his recitation : — 

Jam satis terris nivis atque dirae 
Grandinis misit Pater et rubente, 



and — 



Non ebur neque aureum 
Mea renidet in domo lacunar. 



When I think of his boyhood, his career, and his fate, the 
poet whose lines I first learned from his musical lips, sup- 
plies me with his epitaph : — 

Ille, mordaci velut icta f erro 
Pinus, aut impulsa cupressus Euro, 
Procidit late, posuitque collum in 
Pulvere Teucro ! 

I remember that Poe was also a very fine French scholar. 
Yet with all his superiorities, he was not the master spirit, 
nor even the favorite of the school. I assign, from my recol- 
lection, this place to Howard. Poe, as I recall my impres- 
sions now, was self-willed, capricious, inclined to be imperi- 
ous, and though of generous impulses, not steadily kind, or 
even amiable : and so what he would exact was refused to 
him. I add another tiding which had its influence, I am 



350 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

At the time of which I speak, Richmond was one of the 
most aristocratic cities on this side the Atlantic. I hasten 
to say that this is not so now. Aristocracy, like capping 
verses, has fallen into desuetude — perhaps for the same 
reason : times having changed, other things pay better. 
Richmond was certainly then very English, and very aristo- 
cratic. A school is of its nature democratic ; but still boys 
will unconsciously bear about the odor of their fathers' 
notions, good or bad. Of Edgar Poe it was known that his 
parents had been players, and that he was dependent upon 
the bounty that is bestowed upon an adopted son. All this 
had the effect of making the boys decline his leadership ; 
and on looking back on it since, I fancy it gave him a fierce- 
ness he would otherwise not have had. . . . 

Not a little of Poe's time in school, and out of it, was 
occupied with writing verses. As we sat together, he would 
show them to me, and even sometimes ask my opinion, and 
now and then my assistance. I recall at this moment his 
consulting me about one particular line, as to whether the 
word " groat " would properly rhyme with " not." It would 
not surprise me now if I should be able, by looking over 
his juvenile poems, to identify that very line. As it is my 
only chance for poetic fame, I must, I think, undertake the 
search. 

My boyish admiration was so great for my schoolfellow's 
genius, that I requested his permission to carry his portfolio 
home for the inspection of my mother. If her enthusiasm 
was less than mine, her judgment did not hesitate to praise 
the verses very highly ; and her criticism might well gratify 
the boyish poet ; for she was a lady who, to a natural love 
for literature inherited from her father, Edmund Randolph, 
had added the most thorough and careful culture obtained 
by the most extensive reading of the English classics, — the 
established mode of female education in those days. Here, 
then, you have the first critic to whom were submitted the 
verses of our world-famed poet. Her warm appreciation 
of the boy's genius and work was proof of her own critical 
taste. 



APPENDIX 351 

The graphic style of this recital shows that Colonel 
Preston possessed in abundance the power of interesting 
his readers. His positive, rather dogmatic nature was 
not of the absolutely unbending kind, and his adoration 
of his gifted wife, his pride in her achievements, his un- 
ceasing encouragement and sympathy, oiled any grooves 
of the inflexible kind that might appear at what one 
might call moments of overweening heredity, and soft- 
ened a robust masculine strength and self-assertion into 
something like the velvety curves and spirals of the 
flexile feminine nature. 

Streams of Southern youth have flowed through the 
crowded class-rooms of the Military Institute, and for 
forty years their edges were emeried and polished 
against this courteous, steadfast, virile incarnation of 
manly manhood, to their infinite benefit and enrich- 
ment. Colonel Preston was a power in the town, a 
power in the church, a power in the lecture-room, a 
power in his home. His friends often smiled at his 
old-fashioned conservatism, as when he clung to the old 
canal-boat and opposed the introduction of railways on 
the ground (he smilingly asserted) that it " would wake 
all the babies in town long before daylight ! " But all 
recognized the sturdy common sense of his constant 
battle against noisy innovation and radicalism. He and 
his son-in-law, the distinguished war critic and historian, 
Colonel William Allan, played no unimportant part in 
Jackson's Valley campaign, at a later date, and their 
careers make up a part of the history of that memor- 
able period. Many eminent men went forth from the 
Institute to do battle for the Confederacy, — gener- 
als, colonels, engineers, congressmen, legislators, even 
bishops and governors ; and none of these were exempt 
from the personal influence of such men as Preston, 



352 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Massie, Williamson, Gilham, Smith, Jackson, and later, 
of Maury, Brooke, Custis Lee, and the present accom- 
plished faculty of the Institute. 

The exquisite beauty of the parade grounds, the 
striking situation of the castellated buildings (commemo- 
rated in Mrs. Preston's " Semi-Centennial Ode "), 
the inspiring sight of battalions of trim cadets in blue- 
gray uniforms and gleaming buttons going through their 
complicated evolutions every afternoon like clock-work, 
the sound of " taps " and " reveille " and rolling drum 
and far-sounding fife, the evening gun, the gayly 
lighted Mess Hall with its animated groups, and now 
the beautiful Memorial Halls in honor of Jackson and 
Smith, forming pictures never to be forgotten, group 
themselves into tableaux vivants that the memory will 
not willingly let die. All their lives the Prestons were 
associated with these scenes of beauty: quorum pars 
magna fuerunt ; and Mrs. Preston became the poet 
laureate of both institutions. 

For if a poem was to be written, if an anniversary 
ode was to be sung, if a dancing wedding-hymn of many 
a linked stanza, or involute Spenserian rhythm, was to 
be composed in honor of a village bride, Mrs. Preston 
was always the one to be called upon, was always 
ready with " The Heart of Bruce," " Belle White," or 
the noble memorial stanzas to Washington and Lee and 
the Institute, or the Threnody on Edgar Allan Poe. 
She easily became queen regnant — if queen there could 
be — of the little republic in which she lived and over 
which she ruled with kindly, appreciative, but acknow- 
ledged sway. An invalid through so many years of 
her life, shy, secluded, studious, an inveterate reader, a 
copious correspondent, with many literary friendships, 
always with some literary " iron in the fire," — some 



APPENDIX 353 

book at press, some article to write, some book to 
review, — her inner as well as outer life was filled 
to overflowing with agreeable engagements, and her 
crowded work-table, with its new books and foreign 
stamped letters and autographed pictures of far-away 
friends, was but a pleasant type and symbol of the in- 
ternal, the intellectual activities that engrossed her days. 

As far back as 1835 this precocious pen began 
writing, when its wielder was a schoolgirl at Easton, 
Penn., where her father was president of Lafayette 
College. Access to Mrs. Preston's commonplace-books, 
manuscripts, and journals shows wonderful activity on 
the part of the girl poet, who, scarcely in her teens, was 
called upon to celebrate the Fourth of July, write mad- 
rigals and rhymes and poems of all kinds, and show her 
unusual talent for melodious versification in a thousand 
ways. The American journals from 1848, or even 
earlier, began to teem with productions signed " Mar- 
garet Junkin" (Jonquin was the Huguenot way of 
spelling it, Mrs. Preston told the writer) ; the famous 
" Southern Literary Messenger," edited by Poe and 
Matthew Fontaine Maury and John R. Thompson, 
catches echoes of this early matin song and reproduces 
its graceful trills ; and north, east, and south the week- 
lies had many a Poet's Corner brightened by rays from 
this abounding poet's life. A note-book dated Easton, 
1835, shows in delicate, girlish handwriting, when the 
remarkable child was only fifteen years old, " Notes on 
Locke's Human Understanding," quotations from Silvio 
Pellico, Sheridan, Kant, Coleridge, Carlyle, Goethe, 
Tacitus, condensed biographies of Petrarch and other 
Italian masters, and extracts from many of the cele- 
brated poets of the day. 

Another volume of very early date is filled with printed 



354 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

clippings from the literary periodicals of the day, con- 
taining illustrated devotional poems, novelettes, stories, 
legends, a sixty-dollar prize story ("The Stepmother") 
from the Baltimore " Weekly Sun," sonnets, Christmas 
lays, Bible poems, dirges, translations (among them the 
famous " Dies Irae "), most of them signed Margaret 
Junkin. 

A very interesting little booklet crops up among these 
faded manuscripts and clippings, — "A Theme Book," 
wherein the poet has entered suggestions for future 
poems, essays, and tales, notes for ballads and the like, 
historical incidents, picturesque anecdotes. 

Excellent as her memory was, she never trusted it 
wholly, and many a pleasant conference does the pre- 
sent writer remember to have held with her, and many a 
notelet received, asking for news of some literary per- 
sonality, the whereabouts of some striking episode or 
anecdote that she could not trust herself exactly to place, 
which she wanted to embody in a "Cartoon" or a 
"Ballad." 

Her learned father had early schooled her thoroughly 
in Latin, Greek, and French, in English literature and 
in theology; she was saturated with the faith of the 
forefathers, and her cultured mind was a storehouse of 
the literary treasures she had assimilated. Culture — 
culture to the finger-tips — is the word that expresses 
the kind of education that Mrs. Preston had received. 
She was not a bluestocking; she shrank from the 
reputation of a bas-bleu ; the idea of being called a 
" learned woman " — a Molieresque femme savante — 
made her recoil with horror. Her humility was great. 
What she had taken in from the great writers of olden 
and modern time was their bloom, their essence, their 
perfume ; and this she gave forth in the spiritual fra- 



APPENDIX 355 

grance of her poems, an ethereal presence that hovered 
about everything she said or did, and communicated an 
exquisite refinement to her conversation and correspond- 
ence. Those who knew Mrs. Preston only as a writer 
could never appreciate the delicate humor that played 
about her spoken words as the lambent fires played 
about the head of lulus : the quick repartee, the smil- 
ing jest, the witty flash, the homely Scotch common 
sense and good judgment that underlay her whole life 
and made her as notable in housekeeping as she was in 
literature. 

The hospitality of Preston House was as well known 
as the grace of the gifted hostess, whose crullers and 
"Christ crotches" and waffles had more than a local 
celebrity, and showed the rare union of practical and 
ideal gifts in the rounded, many-sided woman. Never 
an ink stain did the Boorioboola-Ghaites see on her 
immaculate fingers or any trace of untidiness in hair 
or person due to absorption in literature. A more alert, 
wide-awake head of the household was not to be found 
in all the Valley of Virginia; and a more systemati- 
cally ordered household, in the homelinesses as well as 
in the elegancies, was nowhere to be found. 

For many years her favorite habit was to take long 
and solitary drives over the blue hills of the Blue Ridge 
around Lexington, in the course of which some charm- 
ing poem would spin itself forth amid the gossamers of 
Indian summer, or get entangled among the turquoise 
mists of the hills and bring back their iridescent hues. 
Often she would call and take up a friend, and the two 
would go rolling down the laureled avenues or to the 
edges of the glorious Goshen Pass, lit with the wavering 
flames of the July rhododendrons, the poet engaged in 
vivacious conversation} the friend listening to and enjoy- 
ing the eager talk. 



356 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

And many a sunset would die on the burning hills 
and many a twilight rich and rare would glow up from 
its expiring embers while the friends traveled on home, 
and the big, comfortable carriage finally came to a 
stop before the house which in Lexington had come 
to be the synonym of comfort, elegance, and culture. 
The " little mother," with the " tiny black key basket " 
a-jingle with its hospitable keys, became one of the 
town's institutions. Everybody went to her for counsel, 
for advice, for comfort, for the new books and the great 
magazines. Her devotional poems, often very beautiful 
in their deep feeling, were in the religious papers taken 
by the community and gave comfort to hundreds of 
readers. The prettiest rhymes went through the mails 
to " Herbert and Georgie " whenever she happened to 
be away at the Springs for rest and recuperation ; and 
Colonel Preston now and then received graceful rhym- 
ing notes written with the ease and fluency of the notes 
flowing from the throat of a bird. 

Mrs. Preston's spontaneity was indeed one of her 
striking qualities. Whether it was a hymn of benedic- 
tion to a missionary going to China, or an epithalamium 
for a bride about to be, or a sonnet for the " Independ- 
ent " or the " Century," a translation from Goethe 
or a Church father, the ever ready gift and grace were 
always there — elves at the fountain, presenting their 
upturned urns of dew or mead ready for the sparkling 
curve of descent. 

A glance at her unpublished manuscript reliquiae 
shows this fountain-like spontaneity that leaps heaven- 
ward at the mere suggestion of a theme ; and also the ret- 
icence that forced the poet to garner her soul-experiences 
and select from them for print only here and there a 
blossom. What the public saw was the finished product, 



APPENDIX 357 

not the wavering, unwoven, fluctuating lines of the de- 
sign that flickered hither and thither in the loom of the 
poet's phantasy until they wrought themselves into some 
" Old Song or New," some picture " For Love's Sake," 
some line for " Beechenbrook." One sees whole poems 
recast, rewritten, interlineated, erased, like bits of 
embroidery raveled out, over-embroidered, "feather- 
stitched," renewed, rejuvenated. These overturned 
urns were once full of fragrant flowers ; now they lie 
in the grass, empty and neglected. 

Mrs. Preston, like Poe (for whom she wrote the 
rhythmical " At Last " when his monument was un- 
veiled in New York), kept a series of most interesting 
record books, — " Pinakidia," Poe called them, — " little 
tablets," on which she wrote quotations, passages that 
stuck fast in her memory, single words that suggested 
poems, lessons from the old legends, artists' names, 
unusual words from old ballads that appealed to her 
imagination, — " polarized words," as Emerson called 
them. Some of these were seeds that grew into flowers 
and fruits ; others were bits of jeweled glass strung to- 
gether on lines of foolscap, to be wrought hereafter into 
some prismatic window, in the shape of dainty cinque- 
foil, lucid triangle or angel-face. 

A keen observer always of the mere beauty of words, 
— those atoms of psychal cadence and mellifluence, — 
Mrs. Preston records in these private note-books the 
garnered treasures of much and multitudinous reading : 
her notes on art, etymology, rhythm, criticism, anecdote, 
mythology, a thousand varied themes, furnish delec- 
table insights into a busy, cultivated mind that found 
seed-pearls in many an old oyster shell that most readers 
would have thrown contemptuously on the shell-heap. 
Long before she came to Lexington, at picturesque 



358 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Pennsylvania Easton she was filling volumes of blank 
books with reminiscences of this kind, — extracts, re- 
quiems, addresses to Kossuth and McDonough, poems, 
some of which (as " The Bells of Brienne ") afterwards 
appeared in her collected volumes, "poems written 
by request," and, among other things, the following 
" Course of Reading in History and Philosophy for the 
Year 1839," when she was in her nineteenth year. 

« 

HISTORY. 

Historical Chart. 
Rutherford's Ancient History. 
Gillies' Greece. 
Ferguson's Roman Republic. 
Gibbon's Decline and Fall. 
Hallam's Middle Ages. 
Robertson's Charles V. 
Watson's Philip II. 
Hume's England. 
Robertson's America. 
Irving's Columbus. 

MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Payne's Intellectual Philosophy. 
Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers. 
Abercrombie's Moral Feelings. 

GEOGRAPHY, ASTRONOMY, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY. 

Arnot's Physics. 

Biot's Astronomie, Physique. 

Brun's Geography, vol. i. 

Verily, those were days of robust intellectual wo- 
manhood, before your Vassars and Wellesleys and So- 
phie Newcombs and Lady Margaret Halls were even 
dreamt of ! The old Scotch Presbyterians knew what 



APPENDIX 359 

" larnin' " was and early inducted their lads and lassies 
into it. Thank Heaven, these merciless days are past 
and one can now imbibe his learning through a cooling 
straw ! 

No wonder that an intellect so early ripe should soon 
win from the Philadelphia " Dollar News Paper " — the 
paper for which Poe wrote his celebrated " Gold-Bug," 
gaining the one hundred dollar prize — two prizes of fifty 
dollars each for the two best prose stories : " The Ash- 
burnes, a Tale of Seventy-Seven," and " The Child of 
Song ; " and that strains from her harmonious lyre should 
soon echo in John Neal's " Saturday Gazette," " The Lit- 
erary Messenger," "The Herald" (just established), 
" The Home Journal," Sartain's " Union Magazine," and 
many another periodical and paper of sixty years ago to 
which she soon became a welcome contributor. Many 
of the old annuals — the "Opals," "Gifts," "Lady 
Books " of a bygone time — contain from her pen 
" gems reset," — fugitive poems that flew around the 
land on paper wings and alighted airily in these congenial 
corners. Her precocity in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, 
her metrical versions of Greek odes and Horatian rhythms 
at sixteen, and her constant and fluent use of English in 
manifold melodious stanzaic forms, had encouraged her 
friends to predict a brilliant future for the delicate, im- 
aginative, high-strung girl, much of whose life was spent 
in darkened rooms, with a distressing weakness of the 
eyes naturally traceable to over-study and under-exer- 
cise. 

Her first great success was " Beechenbrook : A Rhyme 
of the War" (Baltimore: Kelly & Piet, 1866), with its 
striking dedication : — 



360 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

TO 

EVERY SOUTHERN WOMAN, 

WHO HAS BEEN 

WIDOWED BY THE WAR, 

I DEDICATE THIS RHYME, 

PUBLISHED DURING THE PROGRESS OF THE STRUGGLE 

AND NOW REPRODUCED AS A 

FAINT MEMORIAL OF SUFFERINGS, 

OF WHICH THERE CAN BE NO 

FORGETFULNESS. 

" There is sorrow in Beechenbrook Cottage ; the day- 
Has been bright with the earliest glory of May ; 
The blue of the sky is as tender a blue 
As ever the sunshine came shimmering through j 
The songs of the birds and the hum of the bees, 
As they merrily dart in and out of the trees — 
The bloom of the orchard, as sifting its snows, 
It mingles its odors with hawthorn and rose, 
The voice of the brook as it lapses unseen — 
The laughter of children at play on the green, 
Insist on a picture so cheerful, so fair, 
Who ever would dream that a grief could be there ! " 

So begins this musical and pathetic poem whose story- 
has been so charmingly told by Mrs. Allan that it need 
not be further dwelt upon here. It runs on in its melo- 
dious hendecasyllabics for seventy-five duodecimo pages, 
and tells an incident of the War of the Confederacy 
only too familiar to readers and dwellers in the South. 
Written in a few weeks, under intense emotion, it throbs 
with volcanic fires still only half extinct. Few Southern 
men or women can read the poem without tears, and its 
immediate and widespread popularity was attested by 
its going through eight editions within a short time. 

Before this, a year prior to her marriage, Mrs. Pres- 
ton had published, in 1856, " Silverwood : A Book of 
Memories," a pleasant story of Virginia life and land- 
scape, full of the fluent charm of a prose style that had 



APPENDIX 361 

helped to win the three prize stories. " Beechenbrook " 
and " Silverwood " are both out of print now, but both 
are good specimens of the double talent which distin- 
guished the author : extreme fluency in versification and 
bright, winning prose style. 

From the publication of "Beechenbrook," in 1866, 
Mrs. Preston's work approached rapidly its flood-tide : 
the last twenty years of her life are marked nearly 
every lustrum with a golden milestone, — a volume of 
collected verse, into which she has gathered the sheaves 
of miscellaneous poems that had accumulated in the in- 
terval. 

An analysis of these volumes develops the fact that 
the poet excelled in the two branches of the narrative 
and the devotional. The poems most likely to live in 
the four collected volumes are those that sing a story 
and those that hymn a sentiment. Here and there a 
fine sonnet, a fine dramatic dialogue, a reminiscence of 
Greek or of Hebrew life, set a-spinning in mellifluous 
cadences, mark themselves off as the poetically carved 
capitals of a fluted temple colonnade ; but the chiseled 
wreaths and garlands that bind them together are the 
Hymn and the Story. 

This series of four volumes begins with " Old Song 
and New " (J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1870), and is di- 
vided into "From Hebrew Story," "From Greek 
Story," "Ballads and Other Verse," "Sonnets," and 
"Religious Pieces." Nearly all of these are either 
narrative or devotional, showing even then the bent of 
the author's genius. A most varied mastery of metres 
is revealed in the collection ; hardly any two are alike, 
and all show subtle insight into the resources of the lan- 
guage. Among the Greek pieces may be specially sig- 
nalized " Alcyone," " The Quenched Brand " (treated by 



362 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Swinburne in " Atalanta in Calydon "), and " Rho- 
dope's Sandal," each a dramatic incident thrown into 
lines that gleam and quiver : — 

" They caught 
A gleam of flickering robes — a quick, dull plash — 
The sullen gurgle of recoiling waves — 
The clamorous screaming of a startled gull 
That flapped its wings o'erhead, — but saw no more, 
For all their searchings through the moonlit night, » 
For all their desolate wailings, nevermore 
The woe-worn face of sad Alcyone." 

No doubt the devotion of Tennyson and Mrs. Brown- 
ing to themes like these, — poets whom Mrs. Preston 
intensely admired, — influenced the sensitive spirit of 
the Virginian singer and called her attention to the 
Greek and Hebrew masters ; but there is always an in- 
dividual tone, an absence of the harsh rhythms of Mrs. 
Browning and of the quaint mannerisms of Tennyson, 
that make her Greeks and Hebrews entirely her own. 

"Old Song and New" is full of the germinating 
promise of the poetic dialogue that comes to its perfec- 
tion later on in " Cartoons ; " the volume too contains 
the pathetic " A Year in Heaven," " The Vision of the 
Snow," and the following fine sonnet : — 

EQUIPOISE. 

Just when we think we 've fixed the golden mean, — 

The diamond point on which to balance fair 

Life and life's lofty issues, — weighing there, 

With fractional precision, close and keen, 

Thought, motive, word, and deed, — there comes between 

Some wayward circumstance, some jostling care, 

Some temper's fret, some mood's unwise despair, 

To mar the equilibrium, unforeseen, 

And spoil our nice adjustment ! — Happy he 

Whose soul's calm equipoise can know no jar, 

Because the unwavering hand that holds the scales 



APPENDIX 363 

Is the same hand that weighed each steadfast star, — 
Is the same hand that on the sacred tree 
Bore for his sake the anguish of the nails ! 

Just five years later, Roberts Brothers brought out 
" Cartoons," which contains perhaps Mrs. Preston's 
ripest thought and imagery in verse : a series of what 
the Greeks called eidyllia, " little pictures " sketched 
with rare skill and earnestness on a thumb-nail, a cherry- 
stone, the golden circlet of a coin, a medallion ; bits of 
delicate intellectual craftsmanship that recall the jeweled 
ovals, the transfigured inches of canvas, the gilded panels 
on which Fra Angelico wrought his cherub-faces, his 
long-winged golden seraphs, his Madonnas vestured in 
bits of blue Italian sky, his lilies of the Annunciation. 
None of these " Cartoons " are long, but they are nearly 
all specimens of rich intellectual tapestry colored with 
philosophy, sentiment, reverential feeling, a true love 
of art, and a strong dramatic sense. Couched in con- 
versational form, they are poetic " Imaginary Conversa- 
tions," flavored, like Landor's, with the sweet essences 
of Italian memoir and history, old German anecdote, or 
the legends of the Saints. Hardly one but contains a 
fillip, — a flash of the lash at the end of the whip, — to 
bite in its moral epigrammatically, to leave the reader 
in possession of the poetic climax : one can never doubt 
to whom the particular pinxit or fecit belongs. 

MURILLO'S TRANCE. 

" Here, Pedro, while I quench these candles, hold 
My lantern ; for, I promise you, we burn 
No waxlights at our chapel-shrines till morn, 
As in the great Cathedral, kept ablaze 
Like any crowded plaza in Seville, 
From sun to sun. I wonder if they think 
That the dead knights, — Fernando and the rest, — 



364 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Whose bronze and marble couches line the walls, 
Like to scared children, cannot sleep i' the dark." 
And, muttering thus, the churlish sacristan, 
Went, snuffing out the lights that only served 
To worsen the wan gloom. 

And (mindful still 
Of his Dolores' greed of candle-ends) 
He chid, at whiles, some lagging worshiper, 
Nor spared to hint, above the low-dropped heads, 
Grumblings of sunshine being in Seville 
Cheaper than waxlight, and 't were best to pray 
When all the saints were broad awake, and thus 
Liker to hear. 

So, shuffling on, he neared 
The altar with its single lamp a-light. 
Above, touched with its glow, the chapel's pride, 
Its one Ribera hung, — a fearful, sad, 
Soul-harrowing picture of the stark dead Christ, 
Stretcht on the cross beneath a ghastly glare 
Of lurid rift that made more terrible 
The God-forsaken loneliness. In front, 
A chasm of shadow clove the checkered floor, 
And hastening towards it, the old verger called 
Wonderingly back : 

" Why, Pedro, only see ! 
The boy kneels still ! What ails him, think you ? Here 
He came long hours before the vesper-chime ; 
And all the while as to and fro I Ve wrought, 
Cleansing of altar-steps and dusting shrines, 
And such like tasks, I have not missed him once 
From that same spot. What marvel if he were 
Some lunatic escaped from Caridad ? 
Observe ! he takes no heed of what I say : 
'T is time he waked." 

As moveless as the statues 
Niched round, a youth before the picture knelt, 
His hands tight clinched, and his moist forehead strewn 
With tossings of dank hair. Upon his arm 
The rude old man sprang such a sudden grasp 
As caused a start ; while in his ear he cried 
Sharply, " Get hence ! What do you here so late ? " 



APPENDIX 365 

Slow on the questioner a face was turned 
That caused the heavy hand to drop ; a face 
Strangely pathetic, with wide-gazing eyes 
And wistful brows, and lips that wanly made 
Essay to speak before the words would come j 
And an imploring lifting of the hands 
That seemed a prayer : 

" I wait — I wait," he said, 
" Till Joseph bring the linen, pure and white, 
Till Mary fetch the spices ; till they come, 
Peter and John and all the holy women, 
And take Him down ; but oh, they tarry long ! 
See how the darkness grows ! So long — so long ! " 

" Cartoons " is a picture gallery in which incident and 
anecdote have been poetized, thrown on canvas, made 
to talk, dramatized themselves. Each little sketch tells 
its own story in figured language eloquent with warmth 
and fancy. It is a picture talking to you and entering 
your thoughts by direct address. 

AGNES. 

I. 

Surely there hangs a dimmer shine 
Over the sky than a month ago ; 
Droppings of tears this soughing pine 
Holds in its voice — it is sobbing so : 
Yonder a lonely robin weaves 
Heart-breaks into his plaintive weet ; 
Even the scarlet maple leaves 
Sink with a sigh about my feet ; 
And Indian-Summer's haze droops wan, — 
Agnes has gone ! 

II. 

There is the reason : Out of the sky, 
Purpled and paled with dreamy mist, 
Shaken from Breezy wafts that lie 



366 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Calmed in their isles of amethyst, 
Gurgling 1 from every bird that croons, 
Heard in the leaf -fall, — heard in the rain, 
Under the nights and under the noons, 
Ever there sounds the sad refrain, 
Throbbing and sobbing over and on, 
Agnes has gone ! 

III. 

Ah, can we live and bear to miss 

Out of our lives this life so rare ? 

— Tender, so tender ! an angel's kiss 

Hallowed it daily, unaware : 

Gracious as sunshine, sweet as dew 

Shut in a lily's golden core, 

Fragrant with goodness through and through, 

Pure as the spikenard Mary bore ; 

Holy as twilight, soft as dawn, 

Agnes has gone ! 

In 1886 " For Love's Sake " appeared from the press 
of A. D. F. Randolph & Co., getting its title from the 
poem celebrating the marvelous fane of the Taj Mahal 
in India. How charmingly the theme is treated may 
be gathered from the following extract : — 

FOR LOVE'S SAKE. 

You have read of the Moslem palace, the marvelous fane that 

stands 
On the banks of the distant Jumna, the wonder of all the lands. 

You have read of its marble splendors, its carvings of rare device, 
Its domes and its towers that glisten like visions of Paradise. 

You have listened as one has told you of its pinnacles snowy-fair, 
So pure that they seemed suspended, like clouds, in the crystal 
air; 

Of the flow of its fountains, falling as softly as mourners' tears ; 
Of the lily and rose kept blooming for over two hundred years ; 



APPENDIX 367 

Of the friezes of frost-like beauty, the jewels that crust the 

wall, 
The carvings that crown the archway, the innermost shrine of 

all,— 

Where lies in her sculptured coffin (whose chiselings mortal man 
Hath never excelled) the dearest of the loves of the Shah Jehan. 

They read you the shining legends, whose letters are set in gems 
On walls of the sacred chamber, that sparkle like diadems. 

And they tell you these letters, gleaming wherever the eye may 

look, 
Are words of the Moslem Prophet, are texts from his holy book. 

And still as you heard, you questioned, right wonderingly, as you 

must, 
" Why rear such a palace, only to shelter a woman's dust ? " 

Why rear it ? — The Shah had promised his beautiful Nourmaha 
To do it because he loved her, — he loved her, and that was all ! 

So minaret, wall, and column, and tower, and dome above, 
All tell of a sacred promise, all utter one accent — LOVE. 

" For the Love of God " is another fine poem in this 
collection, and so is " Keeping his Word," both illus- 
trating in telling fashion the poet's power of giving a 
sharp yet tender edge to a story in verse. 

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 

Reading a time-stained volume, ancient and vellum-bound, 
Hid in the quaint black-letter, here is the tale I found : 

Only a childish legend, you in your wisdom teach, 
But is there never a lesson even a child may preach ? 



Once, as a traveler journeyed over the Apennines, 
Children and wife together, toiling beneath the pines ; 



368 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Hungry and hot with climbing, deep in a shady pass, 
Pausing they spread their noontide meal on the mossy grass. 

Just as the bread was broken, just as the wine was broached, 
Slowly a band of pilgrims, weary and gaunt, approached. 

Stretching their hands, they pleaded, " For the love of God, we 

pray 
Give us to eat, for nothing has moistened our lips to-day ! " 

" Children and wife, ye hear them ! Giving God's poor our bread, 
Say — shall we trust His bounty, traveling our way unfed ? " 

Up from the grass the children sprang with the barley-cake ; 
" Here is the flask, untasted," the wife said ; " freely take ! " 

Sated, the pilgrims blessed them, leaving them prayers for gold — 
" He for whose sake ye did it, pay you an hundred-fold ! " 

Ready to journey onward, gathering the wallet up, 
One of the unfed children, dropping therein the cup, 

Cried with a look bewildered, " Father, I thought you said 
Nothing was left : why, only look at these loaves of bread ! " 

Stooping beside the fountain, dipping the empty flask, 
The father o'erheard quick voices, eager with wonder, ask, 

"What has so reddened the water? Its drops like grape-juice 

shine ! " 
He lifted the brimming bottle — lo ! it was filled with wine ! 

The year after (1887) " Colonial Ballads," dedicated 
to the author's friend, Jean Ingelow, was published by 
Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and showed again the gift of 
lucid dramatic narrative. Many striking stories from 
old Virginia history — " Cro-a-tan," " Green way Court," 
"The Queen of Pamunkey " — and many from New 
England story — " The First Thanksgiving Day," 
" Miles Standish's First Proclamation " — are thrown 



APPENDIX 369 

into galloping ballad measure and ring with the reso- 
nance of Percy's " Reliques." Mrs. Preston was always 
devoted to the old Italian Vassari and his " Lives of the 
Painters," — that delightful Italian Plutarch whose 
style is almost as limpid as Boccaccio's ; and this book 
abounds in indications of it in its " Childhood of the Old 
Masters," in which Guido and Claude, Leonardo and 
Titian, Giotto and Van Dyke, Angelico and Angelo are 
brought before us in graphic dialogues. The glow of 
Claude and Titian, the grace of Angelico, the naivete of 
Giotto, the far-away beauty of Leonardo are not absent 
from these poetic canvases, which reproduce in a series 
of clear-cut " medalion-heads " the dreams and reveries 
of the Renaissance, the golden tides of poesy and ro- 
mance that then flowed over Mediterranean Europe. 

In one of these little volumes, which had not been 
opened for a long time, the writer found the following 
little note, dated — 

Dec. 30, '86. 

My Dear Professor, — Ex pede Herculem ! Who but 
you could have written that charming notice of my little 
volume of religious verse in " The Critic " ? I did not send 
you a copy purposely, because I didn't want you to feel 
obliged in any degree to write a critique, but since you have 
done it without any hint on my part, how much more I do 
value it ! I have had a great many notices of the little book 
sent me ; but yours is the very best, because it is not so full 
of fulsome praise, but is discriminating and scholarly, as 
everything you write must be. 

I have gathered together some dictated sketches, which 
Randolph asked me for, and offered to publish at his own 
risk; my copies are exhausted, but I have ordered some 
more, and will send you one when they come. Now you 
will think, " She has me on the hip ; she is going to make 
me notice her whether I will or no." These thumb-nail 
sketches will seem as tame to you as the Main Street of 



370 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

Lexington; but remember there is only one person, here and 
there, who exhausts the world of travel, as you have done. 
Every page was dictated, and no proof, not even a page of 
it, overlooked by myself. But I have many friends who 
will read it because I wrote it, and that is my reward. 

Best Christmas wishes to your wife and yourself, and be- 
lieve me, Ever gratefully yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

The book spoken of in the letter was " A Handful of 
Monographs," in which the author for the first time visits 
Europe and describes with delightful freshness her im- 
pressions of the ancient world, about which she had been 
pondering and poetizing all her life without ever having 
seen it with the physical eyes. All the wealth of her 
varied reading is poured out on the pictured page. The 
unalloyed happiness of having her husband and family 
with her intensifies the enjoyment ; and the leisurely 
rate of travel and the choice of only the finest parts of 
Europe compassable in a summer tour make this trip 
truly the climax and culmination of the poet's life. The 
Aidenn dreamed of was now realized. She got very 
near to the heart of the Old Country whose soul was 
already so intimately hers, and she bathed herself, 
spiritually, in its intoxicating dews. The fascinating 
itinerary of this journey carried the party of seven 
"in the track of the Golden Legend," up the Vale of 
Chamounix and the Drachenfels, to Cologne and Chillon, 
to Antwerp and the Hague, through the crypts of 
Canterbury Cathedral and the aisles of Westminster, 
"Around Greta Hall" and the Wordsworth country, 
into Sir Walter's land and through "The Heart of 
England." The Oxford Quadrangles were the subject 
of a delicious pilgrimage ; Kenilworth and Furness 
Abbey overflowed with memories cf Elizabeth and the 



APPENDIX 371 

monks ; the white pinnacles of Warwick Castle and the 
Bazaar conducted by the countess made up an interest- 
ing experience ; and " King William's Orange-Trees " at 
ancient Hampton Court vied with " The Quaintest City 
in England" — old Chester — to store the crowded 
portfolio with sketches and recollections. 

The stimulus, the exhilaration of this long-deferred 
trip were enormous. The poet visited Cripplegate Church 
and saw the painted sheen of its cherub-window fall 
over and glorify the pew where Milton sat, the follow- 
ing beautiful sonnet welling up in her bosom mean- 
while : — 

IN CRIPPLEGATE CHURCH. 

I stand with reverence at the altar-rail 

O'er which the soft rose-window sheds its dyes, 

And looking up, beheld in pictured guise 

Its choir of singing cherubs — Heaven's All Hail 

Upon each lip, and on each brow a trail 

Of golden hair ; — for here the poet's eyes 

Had rested, dreaming dreams of Paradise, 

As on yon seat he sat, ere yet the veil 

Of blindness had descended. 

Who shall say, 
That when the " during dark " had steeped his sight, 
And on the ebon tablet flashed to view 
His Eden with its angels, mystic bright, 
There swept not his unconscious memory through, 
The quiring cherubs that I see to-day ! 

At 50 Wimpole Street she lingered over the home of 
Elizabeth Barrett, whence she fled with Browning to the 
"little church around the corner" from the old ogre- 
father, was married, and off to Italy and " Casa Guidi 
Windows " ! Her Presbyterian heart saturated itself 
with reminiscences of the Westminster Catechism in the 
Jerusalem Chamber; end her final conclusion about 



372 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

"Democracy in Europe" was that it is a more real 
kind than exists in hurried, dollar-loving, elbow-pushing 
America, whose people have forgotten how to enjoy 
themselves. This journey was indeed " a year of con- 
solation" to the author, who had long hungered and 
thirsted after something more than "fireside travels," 
and now, in the meridian of her strength and poetic 
powers, with all her loved ones about her, saw the dis- 
tant dream turning into a precious reality. 

T^ell might she say, Enough! and gather up the 
evening lamp, and smile good-night ! 

But this chapter would be incomplete if it failed to 
emphasize the many-sided activity of the author as a 
reviewer, correspondent, and contributor to the casual 
publications of the past twenty years. A well-filled 
scrap book, abounding with fugitive papers and "flie- 
gende Blatter " of all kinds, lies before us and reveals 
Mrs. Preston's incessant cooperation in all the literary 
journalism of the day, the incessant calls made on her 
ready pen and the ready response to the calls. Her 
secluded life, in spite of its perpetual social calls, " the 
ingathering of the clans " on festive occasions, the an- 
nual visits to the Springs in search of health and recrea- 
tion, left her a busy leisure which, in the companion- 
ship of her accomplished husband, she busily filled with 
intellectual work. Both delighted in everything con- 
nected with the church ; he was for many years super- 
intendent of the Sunday school (colored) and did effec- 
tive work among the blacks ; and she enriched the con- 
temporary periodicals with those gems of religious verse 
which we cannot but think mark the acme of her talent. 
Full of spiritualized emotion, expressing with rare ease 
and music what all have felt, tender and deep in the 
chords they strike, and glowing with a fervor that de- 



APPENDIX 373 

scends from the souls of the hymn-loving, hymn-singing 
Scotch ancestry, these poems contribute the most per- 
sonal heritage Mrs. Preston has left, the direct legacy 
of her soul, her most individual word to each of her 
readers. She delighted to send these pieces to the 
" Independent," the " Congregationalist," the " South- 
ern Presbyterian," to all the prominent religious jour- 
nals of the day; and they have thus comforted and 
strengthened thousands. The "Chimes for Church 
Children " garner up many of these choice bits and 
show an unusual gift in telling to children the simple 
stories of ethical and Biblical belief. 

This serious — one might think sombre — side of her 
nature is edged, however, with the silver lining of " Aunt 
Dorothy," a delightfully humorous story of Old Virginia 
plantation life, in which it is not difficult for the initiated 
to discover the originals : a story reproducing faces and 
atmosphere of the Old Dominion long years ago, " befo' 
de wah," when slavery showed all its most human and 
poetic sides. This, with " Aunt Kizzie's Creeds," plainly 
enough shows Mrs. Preston's understanding of the negro 
nature both on its humorous and on its pathetic sides. 

The following little batch of notes from Mrs. Preston 
to the writer are good specimens of her graceful episto- 
lary style, and will serve to reveal her intense interest in 
literary matters when she herself was nearly blind : — 

Thursday. 
Dear Prof. Harrison, — You are such a busy man, I 
hear, that I hesitate to interrupt your grave studies for a 
passing moment. Nevertheless, read the few words I have 
scribbled about your namesake's new translation of The 
Odes of Horace, — if you have seen his little book, I feel 
sure you will agree with me : the angularity of the render- 
ings would strike you instantly. 



374 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

By the way, where are those Sketches of Travel you were 
to have prepared for the press ? I 'm afraid you let those 
Washington and Lee boys eat up your valuable time — now 
don't I Your conscientiousness will hurt you as it has hurt 
Prof. Caskie Harrison. (But he has Prof. Longfellow on his 
side, who praises him wonderfully !) 

I have wanted so much to hear you talk — but have been 
a positive invalid for ever so long. 

May I ask you to hand the Southern Review to my George 
at French Class — as I want to send the notice to Prof. C. H. 
Ever very truly, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

Nov. 10. 

My dear Prof. Harrison, — A niece of mine who has 
been summering at the Channel Islands sent me the other 
day this little collection of Patois Poems, which may have 
some interest for such a seeker after dialects as yourself ; 
so I send them over for your entertainment. 

I was unfortunate in not seeing Mrs. Harrison and your- 
self the other day, and I fear now that I shall not have the 
pleasure of meeting your mother again, as I am just about 
to start to Philadelphia ; Mr. Preston goes with me. In 
case I should not see Mrs. Harrison senior, give her my love 
and regrets at not being able to see more of her. I have 
been having constant company lately, which has prevented 
my seeing as much of her as I would like. 

The Critic's notice of your " Story of Greece " is pretty 
fair, I think ; but you see they will be after you, these critics, 
for letting the hearts of the Greeks " sink into their boots," 
but if that is all the fault they have to find, you will not be 
much hurt. 

Very truly yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

Thursday. 
Dear Prof. Harrison, — I have had it on my mind for 
several weeks past, to write and ask how you progressed in 



APPENDIX 375 

your literary work — but I have been the entire winter such 
a wretched invalid — miserably depressed and made deaf 
with horrible sore throat, that I concluded my friends had 
forgotten me, and considered my obsequies to have taken 
place at the same time poor Fritz's did ! Poor dear Fritz ! 
The boys buried him sadly at the foot of the orchard, and 
Mr. Preston pronounced a Latin oration over his remains. 
It is my comfort that he has " gone where the good dogs go " 
— for he did his duty, faithfully in this life, if that will gain 
him admission ! No, we have not yet imported any more 
" bloodhounds " ! We have one old grey idiot, who runs if 
you say " boo ! " 

I am sorry for the necessity of compression — it is so 
troublesome. I have seen announcements of your forth- 
coming vol. over and over. It disappoints you to be so 
used ? Ah, well, my dear fellow, what " castles in Spain " 
were not disappointing ? 

But I doubt not it will do you infinite credit, and redound 
to your good in every way, and " put money in the purse," 
which you see even immortal old " Will " thought it worth 
while to work for. 

But I am afraid you will kill yourself toiling over MSS. 
so. Out in the air with you ! — out in the delicious sunshine, 
no matter if the University Press (of Cambridge) does have 
to wait for you. What 's fame without health ? splendid, 
magnificent, golden health — the very, very best thing in 
the world. I who lack it, have lived to be sure of this. So 
now that you are young, don't, don't overtax yourself, any- 
way. It is so unwise a thing to do — but a thousand people 
have told you so already ! 

The new Southern Magazine (the editors write me) will 
appear the 1st of May. 

Ever very truly, 

Margaret J. Preston. 

Thursday, Jan. 19. 
Dear Prof. Harrison, — I am greatly obliged for the 
kindness of your note,*in offering to help me in case I should 



376 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

go to press, with my very realistic verses. But depend upon 
it, I shall put myself out of the pale of your friendship if 
you think that this friendship is composed of such brittle 
material that it cannot stand honest criticism. Did I not 
criticise you mercilessly in the matter of " Greek Vignettes," 
from the beginning of which I made you cut away fifty 
pages ! and I did n't lose your friendship for all. It is all 
bosh, my good fellow, that one friend cannot stand another 
friend's fault-finding. Nothing pleases me more than to 
find one willing to take this trouble ; so if you are not willing 
to give me an hour or two, in order that you may run over 
these Sonnets, I won't believe that you care a fig whether they 
are good or not ! I am not disposed to be the least hurt by 
criticism, even if it is severe, provided the spirit is kind and 
just. 

I remember Fenelon somewhere says, " If God tires you, 
don't be afraid to tell Him so ! " That seems rather impious, 
but if a friend can't stand being called a bore, or being told 
of want of taste, sentiment, or finish, all I have to say is 
that this is prima facie evidence that such a one needs scoring, 
and ought to have it. So be persuaded to read my Sonnets ; 
say which are the best, which worst, and throw out unworthy 
ones. Whatever you do, shall not have the power to create 
the faintest ripple in our friendship. 

I will not trouble you to return the MS., but will send for 
it in the early part of the week. 

I had a letter from Miss Kingsley yesterday. She is quite 
earnestly engaged in literary work. It takes about four 
weeks to write and get a reply from England ; by that time 
I hope you will hear from Mrs. Kingsley. 

As to autographs, I have letters from Whittier, Long- 
fellow, Holmes, Philip Marston, and such people, but how 
to lay hands upon them among five thousand other letters, 
is the question. My own eyes can make no search ; but if 
any turn up I will send them to you. 
Very truly yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 



APPENDIX 377 

Feb. 11. 

Dear Prof. Harrison, — Can you give me any book 
(not in Latin or Greek), wbicb will furnish me with a little 
story about Praxiteles, and the legend about his faun ? You 
remember that the sculptor promised his best work of art to 
the lady of his love, but insisted that she should make the 
selection; of course I need not recall the ruse which she 
practiced in order to find out which he thought the best. 
Now if you can send me any book that contains the story, I 
shall be very much obliged. 

A ballad of some sort is demanded of me for one of the 
Northern magazines ; have you got such a store of themes 
lying by you that you can spare me one ? My want of eye- 
sight allows me to make no search, and I daresay your 
memory is stocked with old ballad lore somewhat after the 
fashion of Sir Walter. 

Were not Mrs. Harrison and you very much shocked to 
hear of the somewhat tragic death of our poor friend, Mrs. 
S ? It is too sad to think of ! 

Love to Mrs. Harrison. 

Very truly yours, 

Margaret J. Preston. 



To sum up this long and yet inadequate sketch of 
fifty years of literary life : — 

Mrs. Preston was a true poet, whose spontaneous 
gift of poesy grew out of an ardent imaginative and 
devotional nature cultivated to the highest degree by 
reading and study. Her masters in the art were first 
Religion and Enthusiasm for the Beautiful ; then Long- 
fellow, Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Brown- 
ing. From all these sources the stream of poesy that 
naturally ran through her nature was enriched and 
spiritualized. To a natural gift for rhythm and cadence 
far beyond the usual, she added an exquisite ear for 
spiritual music, ever on the alert for the impalpable 



378 MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON 

melodies that haunt the slopes of Parnassus and float 
ethereally about its laureled clefts. Her glowing Cel- 
tic nature was all Southern in its passion and love of 
harmony ; and though all American poets must stand 
behind the sovereign Poe in his supreme distinction, 
Mrs. Preston takes her place beside Lanier and Hayne 
and Timrod in fertility, wealth of fancy, culture, and 
rhythmical melodiousness of expression and feeling. 

In memory of her delicate yet vigorous work, in 
recognition of her varied and delightful gift, some 
Old Mortality might well select three of the loveliest 
words in our language and inscribe them on tablets of 
Parian: Woman, Poet, Saint. 



(Cfce ftilier#be pre^ 

Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 



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